CHAPTER ONE
September 17, 2011
Baghdad, Iraq
General MacKenzie Parnell watched the three private military contractors enter the noisy Baghdad bar and thread through the crowd to the back corner table. Locals and military personnel saw them enter and would see them leave under their own steam.
All a part of the plan.
Through iron will alone, Nitro Mack controlled himself.
He had earned the nickname decades ago when his quick temper and disproportionate response to everything that blocked his path had landed him in trouble.
Every day.
The years had not mellowed him. Parnell was as volatile at fifty-seven as he had been at age seven.
Both the moniker and the trait were essential elements of his DNA as well as his success.
Nobody messed with Nitro Mack and lived to brag about it.
He smiled. The three men approaching him now would learn that lesson soon enough.
He recognized them instantly.
One looked like an accountant, except his flat dead eyes resembled a shark’s.
One was black.
The third was taller than the others.
The three walked well enough, but Parnell watched their arms. He’d acquired their medical records before he contacted them. All three had suffered severe breaks to their dominant upper limbs.
The first guy’s shattered right humerus had been bolted together with titanium hardware and healed into an arm of limited use.
The second’s crushed right wrist was now fused and stabilized, resulting in an immobile joint and limited function of the hand.
A compound fracture of the third man’s left arm caused it to hang shorter than the right and bend oddly at the elbow.
Over time, Parnell had perfected the art of impulse control. Yet, this situation, as such things were euphemistically known in security circles, had stretched his skills to the snapping point. He was more than angry. He was enraged.
The slow burn had started almost a year ago and stoked hotter with every dead end he’d reached, searching for the bastard who had double-crossed him and disappeared.
Worse, his former colleague had also absconded with Parnell’s retirement fund. Money he had worked hard to steal from the Army’s dwindling budgets.
Whenever he thought about his missing cash, his temper flared. Only by sheer force of will had he shoved his rage to a temporary smolder. He tapped his finger on the table rhythmically, reminding himself to keep his powder dry for another hour. Maybe not even that long.
The three contractors approached, seated themselves, ordered drinks, and settled in to receive last minute changes to their mission from the General. It pleased him to recall that all three would be dead within the hour.
Parnell almost smiled.
He knew their names, but he thought of them as Moe, Larry, and Curly.
Not because they were clueless or funny.
Far from it. Each was a well-trained killing machine.
Tagging them with the comedic handles was one of many tricks he’d devised to manage his fury.
Moe was left handed. Larry and Curly were right handed.
It was surely no coincidence that their injuries were inflicted to remove them from the battle field.
Parnell had enticed the three stooges here in the same way he had engaged their boss years ago. They were kindred spirits. Fighting men who expected violence to define their lives, which they lived without an ounce of remorse.
The type of man Parnell knew well. Nitro Mack intended to exceed their expectations today.
After the three stooges were served, Parnell said, “Did you park where I instructed? I’ve got a guy out there to watch your vehicle. This place is full of thieves. Fast ones.”
“Yes, sir. Vehicle’s twenty yards to the north, in front of the empty field, just as you ordered.” Larry spoke first, marking himself as the leader of the group. “We’ve read the materials you sent, General. We have our gear with us. We’re good to go.”
Moe and Curly nodded like bobble heads.
Parnell watched them through hooded eyes. They had never been the military’s best or brightest.
Quite the opposite.
The only thing that had kept them out of Leavenworth was lack of evidence.
Charges couldn’t be proved against them back when they were discharged, so they were sent on their way with little more than a hard boot to the ass.
But these three couldn’t let the military go. It was an almost pathological thing with some Special Forces guys. They never moved on. They couldn’t function in civilian life and had no desire to try. Naturally, they’d joined up with the only private paramilitary outfit willing to take them on.
Parnell’s intel was solid.
Their leader was gone and their team had been reduced to five. These three, and two more he hadn’t located yet.
He’d wondered how the five had survived when better men had died. First order of business was to find out.
“Where’s your CO? I was expecting him to be with you.” Parnell was expecting nothing of the kind.
His partner had been missing for several months and Parnell had turned over every rock looking for him. No luck. Which was the only reason these three mouth breathers were still alive.
Moe, Larry, and Curly shared quick glances.
Larry cleared his throat and replied for them. “We believe the Colonel is, uh, dead, sir.”
Parnell nodded. He believed so, too. Which meant nothing.
He wanted proof. “What’s your evidence?”
Larry lowered his gaze briefly before he squared his shoulders as if the information was embarrassing. “He did not return from his last mission, sir. We haven’t heard from him for twelve months. We’ve tried to locate him with no success.”
“When and where did this happen?”
Parnell had traced the Colonel and his team to London. They’d deplaned there a year ago and then vanished. As if Britain had swallowed him, his team, and even his vehicles, whole.
“A small town outside of London called Bishops Pargeter. Eleven, twelve months ago. There were eight of us, sir. Our CO and the other five embarked on the mission. We were ordered to stay behind.” Briefly, Larry glanced down, and then raised his head to stare into Parnell’s eyes. “None of them returned.”
“I see.” Parnell folded his hands in his lap and nodded slowly.
He felt his rage burning hotter, but he replied with hard and deadly calm. “And you three turned and ran. You failed to exact justice on behalf of your team. You left their bodies behind.”
Moe and Curly were looking down at the table, leaving Larry to extricate them from the truth of their cowardice.
These three poor excuses for pond scum were not a team worthy of the army and they never had been.
Parnell’s decision to terminate them was justified. They should have died long ago.
He felt not even a slight twinge of remorse for his plan.
Larry cleared his throat again. “We had been disabled by the enemy and could not pursue or recover, sir.”
“Disabled how? Who was the enemy?” Parnell heard the anger in his voice and clamped his jaw before he demanded too much, too soon.
These three no longer served. He held no real power to coerce them. Only greed and dysfunctional personalities glued them to their seats.
“We had a sleeper in our unit, sir. A traitor. The enemy was Major Jack Reacher. Former U.S. Army military police, retired.” Larry cleared his throat. “He disabled the three of us by force and, uh, made it clear that we should let him face the others alone, sir.”
Moe looked up and found his voice. “The odds were five to one against Reacher and our guys were heavily armed. We couldn’t get out there, but we expected our guys to prevail.”
“It’s embarrassing to admit this, General. Five to one odds. Our side lost.” Curly glanced at Parnell and shrugged before lowering his gaze again. “We were all three hospitalized and when we were released and went looking for them, we found nothing. No bodies, no vehicles, no weapons. Nothing at all.”
“And Reacher. You found him and took care of him.” Parnell’s fierce frown would have been more than adequate warning to anyone who had seen him explode.
But these three had never witnessed the fireworks. Not yet.
Curly shook his head. “Reacher just disappeared into thin air, sir.”
Moe spoke up again. “We had some pretty serious injuries and they took a while to heal. We’re good to go now. We’re ready for combat.”
Parnell studied them briefly beneath hooded eyes. Cowards. Inept. Disloyal. They deserved to die. No qualms about that decision. None at all.
“I see. That’s that, then.” He nodded as if he agreed with their choices. Only one important question left to be asked. “Contract payments were made to the Colonel. He held my share of revenues. Where is my money?”
Larry’s eyes widened. The three glanced sideways at each other. Larry licked his lips as if his mouth had dried up. “We, uh, got paid in cash. No paper trail that way. The Colonel kept the cash locked in a room in his New York City apartment. At the Dakota.”
Parnell’s breath caught painfully in his chest. His nostrils flared of their own accord. “Who is living in his apartment now?”
Curly said, “We don’t know. Sir.”
Moe seemed to sense Nitro Mac was close to the last of his patience. He jumped in with what he probably figured would get the heat turned in the right direction. “Reacher knew the money was there. We didn’t know the combination to the safe, but Reacher did. The money should be there. But if it isn’t, he probably took it.”
Parnell narrowed his eyes and felt his nostrils flare. He put the kind of edge in his tone that every army grunt was conditioned to fear. “This Reacher seems like a convenient scapegoat to me, gentlemen. He shows up out of nowhere, destroys your CO and your entire team, and steals my money. Then he disappears. You expect me to believe a story like that?”
Curly was the one who stepped up this time. “General, we need to work. If we’d split that nine million dollars between us, why would we be sitting here in this hellhole begging for table scraps?”
Parnell had dressed down many a soldier. He knew when he was being lied to.
Thing was, this preposterous story came across his bullshit meter and registered as true.
Unbelievable, sure.
But true.
Just one thing didn’t ring solid. “Where did your CO keep the rest of the money?”
Larry arched his eyebrows. “Like we said, the money was in the apartment’s safe. All nine million dollars of it.”
Parnell concealed his surprise by cocking his head as if he was thinking things through. So nine million was stashed in the apartment, but what about the rest?
These idiots had no idea.
“What about Scavo?”
Larry’s eyebrows raised. “Nick Scavo? He, uh, hasn’t been with our company since that revolution in Africa, sir. We figure he was killed. We lost three men there.”
“Any chance he was helping Reacher in this last mission?” Parnell knew the answer to the question already.
These three had no clue where Scavo was, or whether he made it out of Africa.
Parnell tuned out Larry’s feeble excuses and sipped the warm beer.
He glanced around the crowded bar. The noise level had jumped up a dozen decibels since these jokers walked in.
No one seemed to notice the four men talking quietly in the back corner.
He returned his attention to his wannabe business partners. “Okay. Here’s how this is going to go. You’ll do the job I hired you for here. When you’re done, you’ll get paid in cash. Half of what you receive is mine. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” they said in unison, nodding as if they meant it, which was not likely.
“One final thing.” Parnell’s frosty blue eyes pierced like lasers under the deep frown that creased his brow. “What does this Jack Reacher look like?”
The three glanced at each other. Larry cleared his throat and spoke for the crew. “Uh, well, sir, he, uh, looks a lot like you. Tall. Big. Dark blond hair. Blue eyes. Like that.”
Parnell tilted his chin up and locked gazes with them one at a time. “I’m going to check your story. If I find out you’ve lied to me, none of us will be happy. Understand?”
“Yes, sir” they said again in unison. “No problem, sir.”
Parnell nodded. “Get to work. I’ll be in touch.”
They scrambled to their feet and snapped a smart salute. Old habits die hard.
Parnell nodded again. The three turned away.
He watched as they wound through the crowd to the front and exited into the sun-washed desert.
After they cleared the threshold, Parnell rose and hurried toward the men’s room.
At the end of the narrow hallway, he ducked out through the back door and stepped into the blinding sunlight.
He slipped on a pair of aviator sunglasses.
Within seconds, he’d located his vehicle and sped away from the bar, raising a plume of dust behind him.
He had covered about half a mile of the rough dirt road when the bomb exploded and shook the very ground underneath him.
He clamped both hands onto the steering wheel to avoid being thrown out of his seat, but he kept the accelerator pressed to the floor.
He glanced back to see vehicle parts and body parts still settling after the blast.
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