Page 50 of Tom Clancy Line of Sight

The woman’s piercing blue eyes narrowed, and her small mouth curled with a question. “You asked for me?”

“You’re Aida Curic?”

“Obviously. Is there something you need?”

Jack ignored the Hulk behind her, his nostrils flaring. Jack had the feeling that if he waved his handkerchief the guy would start pawing the ground and charge him.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Ms. Curic. I tried calling earlier,but nobody picked up. My name is Jack Ryan, and I think I’m looking for you.”

She frowned with confusion at the strangely worded statement. “Sorry?”

“I’m looking for a young woman about your age who was injured years ago in the war. Her name was Aida Curic and—”

“My birth name is Lulic.” She nodded to one side, indicating the goon behind her. She raised her left hand and flashed a diamond wedding band. “My husband’s name is Curic. So is mine now.”

“Well, then you can’t be the Aida Curic I’m looking for. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“Anything else?” she asked.

“My check, please.”

Jack drained his beer waiting for the check, leaving cash and an enormous tip for the trouble he’d caused and his slight embarrassment. He now realized this little adventure was fraught with a few more challenges than he’d anticipated.

At least the beer and the Bosnian Pot were good.

NEAR BIOKOVO, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

The small, idyllic farm was surrounded on three sides by gently sloping, forested hills and bounded by a burbling creek that ran all year except for the winters, when it froze. The traditional whitewashed one-story house appeared gray in the quarter moon, and the red roof tiles grayer still. The sturdy barn stood nearby, topped with cedar shingles slathered in moss. Part of the meadow was surrounded by a stack rail fence to accommodate three milk cows, and another part was a neatly groomedtruck garden behind the house, plowed by a swaybacked horse now bedded down in the barn with the cows for the night.

The squad of black-uniformed men approached from out of the tree line, with red-checkered Croat militiaCRUSADER KNIGHTSunit patches sewn on the sleeves. They carried suppressed AK-74UB long guns with night-vision optics, far more firepower than what they needed for this operation. But it wasn’t the elderly Serb farmers inside the house they were worried about.

Tarik Brkic was kitted out like the others but didn’t wear a balaclava. No need. He remained in the tree line one hundred meters back, and, thanks to his blinded white eye, used a Gen 3 night-vision monocular to supervise the operation.

He watched as flash-bangs flared and popped inside the farmhouse, and a moment later came the dull flash and muffled chatter of suppressed small-arms firing. The only scream that arose was snuffed out in another short burst.

Four of his men dragged the bodies onto the lawn and splayed them out in a row, a slaughtered choir robed in blood.

“Don’t forget the note,” Brkic whispered in his comms, staring through his monocular.

The ghosted green hand of his number two reached into a coat pocket and held the envelope high. The envelope and the letter inside both bore the dreaded crossed swords and red-checkered shield of the infamous Crusader Knights militia.

“Got it,” he replied in Brkic’s earpiece as he pinned the note to the old man’s bullet-ridden nightshirt.

Brkic also heard three dull pops in his ear. Three more of his men in the barn had just dispatched the animals in short order.

But the crack of a branch behind him caught the big Chechen by surprise.

He whipped around, scanning the trees with his one good eye.

Three meters away, pale moonlight illumined a barefoot Serbian boy in nightclothes, staring at him, his wide eyes fixated on the Chechen’s rifle.

The boy was about the same age and height as his own seventh son. He even looked like him.

The boy’s eyes locked with his. Brkic recognized the horrified shudder. His milk-white eye did that to children, even the ones who knew him.

Brkic smiled, gesturing the boy forward with a gloved hand.

“Everything is going to be okay.”