All Necessary Force

import-export company. Tell ’em to get us an address, preferably in Budapest.”

By the time we got an answer, Jennifer had returned with the other two guys. We read the screen together, the information not at all what I expected:

Drenica Group: An Albanian organized crime cabal.

* Named after the Drenica region of central Kosovo, where it was formed.

* Tightly interwoven with the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK-KLA), a radical Muslim extremist group formed to counter Serbian aggression in the 1990s.

* Through KLA connections, some indicators of interface with other Muslim extremist groups, such as al Qaeda.

* Primarily known for their ruthlessness, both with law enforcement as well as with other factions that threaten their territory or perceived business expansion opportunities.

* Connected with organized crime in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Bulgaria.

* Cells worldwide, to include New York City, Los Angeles, Paris, Berlin, and London.

* Primarily concerned with the distribution of heroin. Potentially on track to become the number one wholesaler of heroin worldwide.

* Secondary efforts include white slavery, prostitution, arms trafficking, and extortion.

“So,” Buckshot said, “our terrorists are into drugs as well? What’re we going to do with this information? Look up organized crime in the local phone book?”

“I was thinking of making them come to us.” I smiled at Jennifer.

“What?” she said. “Why are you looking at me?”

“How’d you feel about becoming a prostitute?”

43

I watched Decoy crank his binoculars to their highest power. “Wow, she’s got a great rack. I heard about her when she was going through Assessment, but nobody ever said what a hammer she was. We should’ve had her dress like this the whole time. I’m getting a tent pole just sitting here.”

Jesus. Am I going to have to listen to this shit all night?

Our rental van was parked in a seedy area of Prague, in the closest thing we could find to a red-light district. I’d had Jennifer dress up like a tart and tossed her out onto the street, with the plan being that we’d piss off some other hooker enough to call her boss. According to the Taskforce intel weenies, the Albanians owned all the prostitution here, so that should pique someone’s interest.

When he showed up to chase Jennifer away, Decoy and I would confront him, tying him up in a little argument while Buckshot and Retro beaconed his car during the commotion.

Maybe get some damn use out of the Diamondback.

The beacon itself was a satellite feed and would have worked perfectly on an airplane because — by definition — it would always have a view of the sky, but it would probably have some gaps in coverage when used in a car. That was okay, because everything was a trade-off with technology. Hollywood notwithstanding, there were no magic bullets.

The good thing about the Diamondback, and the reason I stuck with it here, was that the battery life would exceed a week, something we might need as we continued to try and figure out where the EFPs had gone. Intermittent gaps for over a week were better than perfect coverage for forty-eight hours.

I watched Jennifer stalk a real prostitute, this one much younger than her. She put her hands on her hips, turning her back to us and apparently giving the young streetwalker a piece of her mind.

“Holy shit,” Decoy said. “I can’t take this. Check out that ass. Man alive, her legs go on forever. Maybe we should have given her a script for a catfight with the other whore.”

I gritted my teeth, watching the real prostitute walk away talking on a cell phone.

Decoy was new to Project Prometheus. Well, new since I’d left. He was a SEAL, like Knuckles, which is probably why Knuckles had hired his chauvinistic ass. He was a little bit of an anomaly in the SEAL world because he’d learned to swim after joining the Navy. Coming from the backwoods of Tennessee, he’d gotten his call sign when his teammates took him on his first-ever duck hunt. At least the first ever where hunger wasn’t the point of the hunt. He’d blasted the first decoy he’d seen floating on the water, thinking it was real. In his mind, the goal was food on the table, not sport.

He had a solid reputation in a gunfight — as well as a solid reputation as a man-whore. Like he was worried he’d be forced to marry some bucktoothed hillbilly, so he was going to bed as many women as he could until that time. And he was apparently pretty good at it, which didn’t help my attitude any.

He said, “Hey, you wouldn’t mind if I tried to tap that, would you? I mean, she’s not yours or anything, is she?”

Enough.

I snapped my face an inch from his. “Decoy, you and I are going to have a serious issue if you don’t start showing her some fucking respect.”

He backed up until his head was against the door glass. “Whoa, easy, man. I didn’t know you had a thing with her. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

I sputtered for a few seconds, trying to find the right thing to say, finally getting out “That’s not it! She deserves the same respect you’d give a male operator. She’s not ‘mine,’ you ass.”

“Uhh… sure. Whatever you say…” I saw his eyes go wide at something over my shoulder. “Shit! It’s showtime and we’re late!”

A Mercedes had pulled up while we were arguing, and two men were now bearing down on Jennifer and the prostitute. As we piled out of the van, one of the men struck the young prostitute in the face, knocking her to the ground.

The other thug attempted the same thing with Jennifer. She blocked with her left arm, redirecting the energy from his slap outward in a circular motion while she snapped an uppercut to his face. The blow popped his jaw closed with a rifle crack, shattering teeth and dropping him to the ground. We were still fifty feet away, running flat out.

This just got lethal. All because you got jealous at Decoy’s bullshit.

We reached the melee just as the first thug drew his arm back to pile-drive Jennifer. No slap this time. Decoy caught him at the elbow and rotated him backward, flipping him to the ground. I immediately put a knee on his chest and my barrel on his nose. Decoy frisked him, throwing a cheap CZ pistol down the alley and pocketing a cell phone. He then turned to the thug Jennifer had thumped, doing the same thing while the man rolled around holding his bleeding mouth. The man under me screamed in a language I didn’t understand.

I said, “Hey, hold on there, big guy. Calm down. We just didn’t want you to hurt us.”

He looked confused for a moment, then said in broken English, “You will die for this. Let us go now and maybe it will be quick.”

“Wow. That’s my choice? Are you fucking nuts? I’m holding the gun here, asshole.”

He glared at me, signaling he was about to try something. He was brave, I’ll give him that. I pushed the barrel into his eye socket to calm him down.

“Stop it. I don’t want to hurt you. All we were doing was pulling a little scam. We didn’t want to cut into your business. We were just going to do a little fleecing of American tourists. We didn’t know this terrain was owned.”

“You have no idea who you are dealing with. We can reach you in any country on earth. Leave now, and I won’t hunt you down.”

My earpiece clicked twice, telling me that the Diamondback was in place. Time to go.

“Okay, okay. We’re out of here. Sorry for the trouble.”

I backed up, keeping the weapon on his head. Decoy did the same. We pulled abreast of Jennifer.