“You see!” Busick exclaimed. “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but I’m getting sick and tired of that bunch of wanna-be heroes creating a mess and then fading off into the sunset, letting someone else clean up their messes afterward.” Thom raised a hand to his vice president, silently informing him that his point of view was clearly understood and asking him to tone it down, then turned back to Morgan. “You mentioned something about them getting their butts kicked, Doug,” he said. “What else do you have?”

“Another piece of the puzzle—but a corner piece, I think,” Morgan said. “The remains of one Paul McLanahan were reported by customs agents in New Jersey being flown in from Tel Aviv by a funeral director based in Sacramento, California. The FBI’s preliminary investigation confirms that Mr. McLanahan was involved in a suicide bomber attack in Rehoval, Israel, ten days ago. He was a guest at the Hilton Tel Aviv Hotel, checked in the day before. Airline tickets, visas, guided tour schedule—all checks. He was there on vacation.”

“Baloney!” Busick exclaimed. “It’s either the most incredible coincidence I’ve ever heard, or it’s a lie, a cover- up. Paul McLanahan is one of the Night Stalkers—hell, he’s their main guy, next to his brother Patrick and former president Martindale himself. Martindale could have easily created the fake hotel registration, airline tickets, even police reports. McLanahan and the Night Stalkers are in Libya. I know it. He got killed in that raid on the Libyan missile base, and I’ll bet the Night Stalkers are still in the region, in Egypt or Israel, getting ready to finish the job— or grab some payback.”

“So if the Libyans thought the Egyptians engineered that raid, the attack in Egypt could’ve been retaliation,” Kercheval said. “If this thing goes hot on us, McLanahan and Martindale could be responsible for igniting a major war in the Med.”

“You know what it is, don’t you?” Busick asked angrily. “It’s Sky Masters Inc. and Jon Masters. He’s supplying the Night Stalkers with the weapons they need to do these damned secret missions. Those are weapons we funded. That high-tech combat armor, the aircraft, the weapons— he’s supplying them all for this private little mercenary army of Martindale’s.”

“We should slap Sky Masters with sanctions for their support of those nutcases,” Kercheval exclaimed. “We should just shut them down, once and for all. And the Justice Department needs to conduct an investigation of Kevin Martindale. He can’t be allowed to continue organizing private military operations all over the world. If Justice can’t do anything, maybe the press should be told about this....”

“That’s already in the works,” Robert Goff said. “Some of our Navy interceptors caught up with one of Masters’s research aircraft—refueling a modified B-52 bomber over the Mediterranean Sea.”

“What?”