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Mr. Ron Cohen, Mr. Tom Jankiewicz, Mr. James “Joh
My agent, Mr. John Talbot, and editor, Mr. Tom Colgan, have allowed me to continue this awe-inspiring journey as a writer, and I’m thrilled that our teamwork has once more resulted in another rewarding project.
Last but not least, my wife, Nancy, and two lovely daughters, Lauren and Kendall, serve as my ultimate inspiration and most loyal fans, keeping me motivated and freshly stocked with peanut butter and coffee (writer fuel).
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BOLIVIA’S North Yungas Road is known by the locals as El Camino de la Muerte, the Road of Death. It was constructed by Paraguayan prisoners of war back in the 1930s and is one of just a few routes through the mountainous rainforest that co
Sam Fisher knew all about North Yungas, and he knew the man he was chasing had deliberately led him up there to turn him into another statistic. The son of a bitch had no idea that he’d awakened America’s newest and most formidable beast, a blacker-than-black special ops and counterterrorism unit known as Fourth Echelon, commanded by Fisher and free to sink its sharpened talons into men like him. Free to do whatever it took with impunity.
Fisher squeezed the stolen motorcycle’s clutch lever, geared up, and accelerated. He gritted his teeth and cut hard around the next bend, the old Yamaha fishtailing and sending a bolt of anxiety up his spine. As he came out of the turn, the bike’s rusting fenders rattled, and the faded sticker of Jesus affixed to the gas tank began peeling back. At once the headlight flickered through the gloom and heavy rain, and he found his prey just a few meters ahead, rooster tails of mud rising from the man’s own bike. Fisher was out of gears, wailing now at full throttle.
The man known to intelligence sources as Hamed Rahmani, and with the known alias of Abu Jafar Harawi, saw something ahead and cut his wheel sharply, weaving around two pieces of rock appropriately shaped like coffins, one lying across the other. Fisher did likewise, his shoulder brushing along the wet stone. The bike’s engine began to cough and sputter as they climbed toward nearly five kilometers above sea level. They sped by a wider section used for passing, then crossed onto a single-lane stretch ru
Fisher’s arms tensed, his triceps already sore from keeping a white-knuckled grip on the handlebars. He shifted gears again as Rahmani whipped around the next bend and vanished momentarily, only to reappear—his headlight sweeping along the wall to his right.
Seeing that Rahmani was widening the gap, Fisher leaned into the bike and accelerated, tucking in his elbows, trying to make himself a little more aerodynamic to bleed every bit of speed out of the machine.
Suddenly, he was thrown to the right, the front wheel having co
As both tires slammed back onto the dirt, the impact reverberating up his spine, he gasped and recovered control, cutting the wheel to the left to avoid another section of larger gravel and by necessity taking the bike to within a tire’s width of the ledge. He groaned and leaned to his right, guiding the motorcycle past the gravel, then back, closer to the wall. Yes, he’d earned himself a breath now.
What little he could see of the next ravine gave him pause, and he thought of the gear pack he’d left in La Paz, bulging with the rest of his weapons, along with his surveillance and comm equipment. He’d gone into the bar completely undercover, plainclothes. Somehow, someway, the bastard had been tipped off and had bolted. There’d been no time, no opportunity to get on Rahmani’s wheel armed for bear. For the time being it was just the two of them, mano a mano, motorcycle to motorcycle. Fisher’s custom FN Five-seveN semiautomatic pistol with integrated suppressor was tucked into a concealed holster at his hip, and he had to assume that Rahmani was packing at least one or more small arms.
Fisher checked the fuel gauge: about half a tank. If he couldn’t overtake Rahmani, then maybe the thug would run out of gas first. Or maybe Fisher would. There was no way to tell, so . . . he would have to catch up and take this man alive. Rahmani was an army major and intel officer with MOIS, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security. That alone made him valuable. However, he liked to moonlight as a thief who along with a select group of friends had gotten their hands on one hundred pounds of highly enriched uranium, or HEU, from Mayak, one of the largest nuclear facilities in the Russian Federation. After the theft he’d been spotted in Baghdad, then had vanished for a while until he popped up in Bolivia with some drug smuggling associates. He’d thought he was safe. Of course, he had no idea who he was dealing with now.
Blinking wind and water from his eyes, Fisher riveted his gaze on that dim light ahead, trying to follow Rahmani’s trail in the mud, letting him have the more difficult job of picking the lines through, around, and across the debris washing onto the roadway.
After a relatively lazy turn to the right, with a curtain of vines extending three meters from the cliff wall to provide a few seconds of solace from the rain, Fisher’s jaw dropped, and a curse burst from his lips.
A refrigerated shipping truck blocked most of the road. There was only a half-meter-wide track to the left of the vehicle, ru
But there, off to the left, was Rahmani, one hand on his handlebars, the other sliding along the truck’s side for balance as he finally reached the front bumper, gu
As Fisher slowed and carefully—breathlessly—guided his motorcycle around the back of the truck, coming alongside it, he reminded himself to keep his gaze on where he wanted to go. Don’t look down. Damn, the temptation was too great, and as he coasted forward, he flicked his glance to the left. Through chutes of rain and the swirling gloom, he saw how the edge of the cliff was just a hairsbreadth away and dropped off into nothingness. Just then, his front tire shoved through some loose rocks that tumbled over the side. Fisher’s heart was squarely in his throat.