Team Three took off at a brisk run. They were the only members in jumpsuits. Everyone else wore shorts, tank tops, and sneakers. The late-August humidity was raging, but once inside the forest, it would be cooler. As Slick had pointed out, let the swarms of gnats and other assorted bugs attack the others. Besides, she’d giggled, it was the perfect cover for their plan.

Pappy turned his baseball cap backward, something he always did when he was under stress, before he started for the forest. He trotted by rote, his mind busy with other thoughts, mainly the activities of the previous evening. It wasn’t sending off the nine recruits that bothered him but the four men who’d arrived in the cable car. His bosses. In the past, he’d always been told everything there was to know about a mission. How else could he plan and execute a successful mission if he wasn’t privy to every last little detail? This time they wanted to take out one of their own. Why? What had the fifth member of the consortium done that would warrant a sanction? He didn’t like the idea that his new training class would be the one to conduct the operation. He understood his bosses’ reasoning, but that didn’t mean he had to like it, and he damn well didn’t like it one little bit.

His watch told him it was time to fire the flare. It shot high in the air, then spiraled downward, a smoky red, iridescent plume. He dived for cover in the underbrush the moment the flare sizzled in the air.

The game was on.

His gaze ricocheted everywhere in the dim forest, but he didn’t move. His ears, however, were tuned to the forest sounds, sounds he’d learned to identify over the years.

Pappy’s thoughts were still with his late-night visitors as he crouched in the underbrush. The fifth member of the consortium was famous, wealthy, a real blue blood, and from a family known for its philanthropy. He fit in perfectly with heads of states and power brokers, in Washington and abroad. Was it something as simple as one member pissing off one of the other four? Or was it something more serious, like breaching the secrecy of the mountain? Pappy shook his head. Not possible. He knew that man as well as he knew his other employers—inside and out—because he’d made it his business to know everything there was to know about them.