The assets were men so accustomed to watching their own backs there were rumors they literally slept with their eyes open. Getting close to them would be like trying to pull the tail of a cobra. They struck fast, and their fangs were razor sharp.

And in a single strike, three were gone.

It was the single deadliest loss in group history.

And it happened on Roth’s watch.

He let out a long sigh and stood up from his desk. He walked over to the window. The rush hour traffic was thinning out. It was almost nine. He paced across the room and opened the office door.

His team was working furiously, banging away on their computer keyboards or debating in the conference room, pointing at maps and images and graphs.

Thirty-two people worked at group headquarters. Himself, four handlers, and twenty-seven specialists.

And they’d just had their asses handed to them.

And to make everything worse, one of them was a rat. It was the only way the Dead Hand’s cyber attack could have been pulled off. It required someone on the inside to plant the malware. It required a physical transmitting device to work.

A specialist looked up at him from her desk.

“Get you anything, boss?”

“Get my car,” he said.

He shut the door and his eye went straight to the bar cart. He had a bottle of forty year old Islay single malt. It had been a gift from the president. He hadn’t opened it, it was a two thousand dollar bottle, but he was tempted now.

He shook his head and poured himself yet another cup of coffee. He had a long night ahead of him. A lot of explaining to do. Everyone would be looking at him. No one would say it, but he was fighting for his professional life now.

Four briefs had been prepared by his staff, one for each asset.

Rebel, Camaro, Hornet, Mustang.

There wasn’t much to them, a few flimsy pages, but they captured the salient details. He flicked through them. They were his last hope. Because one of them had been falsified.

Rebel: KIA

Hotel Imperial

Ringstraße 16

Vienna, Austria

Assassin rappelled from roof of hotel and entered room through window. Eight shots fired from a suppressed .22 caliber pistol. Asset died from multiple gunshot wounds. Satellite surveillance shows indistinct figure on roof of building prior to attack.

Suspects acquired: None

Special Operations Group Database

The crime scene was in the hands of Austrian police and they could be trusted to acquire forensic evidence reliably. The Vienna field office was already in touch with them. But it would lead nowhere. At best, and this was a long shot, they’d find the assassin. But the assassins acted on orders from an unknown source. They received payment anonymously. They knew nothing of what they were doing or why.

He opened the second file.