“Are you sure that you can trust Kruger, sir? … No, I would never question your orders …. She’s doing very well …. Is that completely necessary? She could be an asset to the organization …. I understand …. Yes, I’ll terminate her and Verbeek and bury them in the desert,” he said.

The Australian sighed and leaned his hands against the railing as he put away his cell phone. He stood there for a moment, as if considering whether his orders were worth following. Then the big man shook his head, placed his right hand into his coat, and retrieved a black Beretta pistol with a sound suppressor threaded over its barrel. He placed the gun behind his back as he moved toward the closed door of the balcony.

Knowing from the overheard conversation that two people were about to be executed, Nic wasted no more time. The balcony was inaccessible from the ground, but he managed to jump off the side of the house and grab the edge of the raised walkway. He quickly pulled himself up and readied his Sig Sauer. He unslung his rifle and laid it by the door, opting for stealth over firepower.

Staying low and checking the corners with the mirror, he followed the Australian into the house. The room attached immediately to the balcony was dark and empty, but Nic saw a light down the hall and heard a woman speaking with words of anger and a man laughing.

He moved down the hall toward the light and found a man in his underwear tied to a wooden dining room chair. Heavyset, in his forties, with shaggy gray hair, Nic immediately recognized the man in the chair as Carl Verbeek. Oddly, Verbeek was the one laughing, while his apparent torturer—a gorgeous young woman with auburn hair—had started to sob uncontrollably. Verbeek’s feet looked like piles of ground beef, and a blood-stained hammer dangled from the woman’s right fist.

The woman barely acknowledged the Australian man coming up behind her. She was an easy target. All the Australian had to do was raise the gun and squeeze the trigger with a quick double tap. The gun would issue two thump-pings, and the woman would be dead. Then the Australian would repeat the procedure on Verbeek.

Nic wasn’t about to let that happen. However—not knowing who these people were, how they were involved in any of this, and what information could be learned from them—he was hesitant to execute the blond man in the same fashion. Nic wanted all three of these people alive.

The Australian raised the gun, and the woman recognized the danger too late, her eyes going wide with shock at the sight of the barrel in her face.

Standing up to full height, Nic swung into the room, aimed his Sig, and said, “Police! Drop the gun!”

The Australian didn’t listen. He twisted toward Nic, bringing the suppressed weapon to bear. Nic rushed forward with two long strides, drove his shoulder into the man’s gut, and wrapped his left hand around the Australian’s right wrist. The gun fired, two bright flashes and deafening pops in the small dimly lit room. Legs still churning, Nic drove the big man back against an unfinished wall, cracking the Australian’s gun hand against an exposed stud.