Kazakov nearly choked on the cognac he was sipping. He rose slowly to his feet, his throat suddenly dry, his ears ringing. It couldn’t be, he thought wildly. No, it couldn't be ... !

“Did you hear me, Kazakov?”

“This commando—he was wearing a black outfit, a full helmet with large eyeholes, and a slim backpack? Did he paralyze you with an electric shock that traveled from electrodes on his shoulders to you, without projectiles or wires?”

“Yes! How did you know?”

“Because I have been hunting him and his team down for the past year,” Kazakov said. “These commandos are Americans. I do not believe they are government operatives—I believe they are privately organized. They fund their organization by shaking down their targets for money or weapons.”

“How do you know so much about them?” Kazakov was about to tell him not to ask stupid questions, but Zuwayy came up with the answer by himself moments later: “So you’ve encountered this group before, eh? Perhaps they are the reason you were captured and brought to trial in The Hague?”

“Zuwayy...”

“And perhaps this private organization got part of its funding from you, eh, tovarisch?” Zuwayy asked, laughing. “Oi dal yimu pa pizde mishalkayl Did you get your ass handed to you by them? Now that I think about it, he did seem to know about you.”

“Listen to me, you ignorant goat-fucker,” Kazakov snarled, “you can make fun of me all you want, but if we don’t stop these commandos, they’ll destroy all of us. You were lucky they just broke your nose and blew up your base—they could have just as easily carried you out of Libya and destroyed your whole fucking capital!”

“What are you going to do, Kazakov?”

“I am going to find those Americans,” Kazakov said, “and I’m going to capture them somehow, I’ll learn all the secrets about who they are and all the secrets about their weapons and technology—and then I’m going to roast each and every one of them on a spit in my living-room fireplace” He paused for a long time, turning the few details he knew over and over and over again in his mind; then “First your missile base at Samah is attacked by an obviously high-tech force; then, your armed residence at Jaghbub is attacked by an equally effective high-tech force. The commando asks that all the detainees from your attack out in the Mediterranean Sea be released. That means that the same commandos were involved in both the attack on Samah and Jaghbub—and that you probably had some of their comrades in custody.”

“Obviously. Na huya eta mn’e nuzhna? So what?”