His mind wandered to the target’s portfolio. Casius was an assassin with “numerous” confirmed kills, the report said. Not ten or sixteen, but “numerous,” as though it was a secret number. A sharpshooter who favored a knife, which meant he had the nerves of a rhino. Anybody who had the skill to take out a target at a thousand yards yet chose to get up close, eyeball to eyeball, had a few screws loose above them eyeballs. The worst of it was the man’s apparent adaptability to the terrain. Evidently he had grown up in this jungle.

“What odds you put on this guy lasting the day?” Graham asked.

Phil scoffed. “As far as we know the guy’s back in Caracas smokin’ a joint and laughing his head off at the Rangers streaking off to pop some white man in leech country.”

Someone chuckled. Hoffman eyed Phil. “They wouldn’t send three teams to a drop point unless they had it on good intel this guy would show up.”

“You don’t get good intel this deep, my friend.”

“Ready the drop line,” Parlier barked as the helicopter feathered near the summit of their drop zone. The troop carrier hovered over a break in the canopy. Hoffman threw the two-hundred-foot rope overboard. Parlier nodded and he dropped into the trees, disappearing below the canopy. One by one the Rangers lowered themselves into the trees.

DEEP WITHIN the mountain, Yuri Harsanyi sat shivering with excitement. In less than an hour a helicopter would take him away to safety. And with him, the large black suitcase that held his future: two thermonuclear weapons.

He had carefully stored the devices in his case the night before and then secured the straps tightly around the leather bag. The replacement bombs sat powerless in Abdullah’s casings. When he tried to detonate his bombs, he would get nothing but silence. By then Yuri would be far removed, living a new life, squandering away his newfound wealth. He had rehearsed the plan a thousand times in the last three days alone.

Yuri saw that the left strap had loosened slightly in the humid heat. He cinched it tight and hoisted the suitcase from the floor. If they decided to inspect him now, he would have a problem, of course. But they’d never checked his bags before. He glanced around the room he’d lived in for so long and stepped away for the last time.

An hour later, precisely on schedule, the helicopter wound up and took off with Yuri sweating on its rear bench.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE