Page 95 of Tom Clancy Line of Sight

He was awfully handsome. What would it hurt? She relented. “Knock yourself out.”

“Grazie.”

The man stepped in, consulting his clipboard. He pointed at the cockpit. “Okay?”

“Don’t touch anything.”

“Of course. Just a formality.”

Lisanne turned back to her workstation. She sniffed the air. Whatever sweet, leathery cologne he was wearing was having its desired effect. She stole a sidelong glance at him. She was on duty, but she wasn’t dead.

He cut a dashing figure in his uniform, for sure, from the top of his high-peaked cap to the bottom of his shiny, patent-leather shoes.

His shoes.

The wrong shoes.

Lisanne drew her SIG Sauer micro nine-millimeter fromthe holster beneath the table, but she was too late. The man batted the pistol out of her hand and lunged for her throat. She let him in close enough to throw a fierce uppercut into his clenched jaw. It wasn’t enough. His eyes watered as he grunted, but his powerful hands still found her neck.

She couldn’t breathe, let alone scream, as his weight bore down on her, pinning her against the desk. She reached behind, her hands desperately searching for something, anything—

She jammed the scissors into his left ear. He screamed in agony and clutched at his wound, releasing her. She threw a hard elbow into his face, toppling him backward.

She turned and ran toward the back of the cabin, diving to the floor where she thought her weapon had clattered to a halt beneath one of the seats. She reached back until she finally wrapped her hand around the pistol’s walnut-grained handle, then rolled onto her back into the aisle, flipping the thumb safety to fire.

But her bladed sights were pointed at empty space.

The Iron Syndicate assassin was gone.

What about the others? She had to warn them. She grabbed her phone and punched Dom’s number.

No answer.

NEAR TJENTIŠTE, REPUBLIKA SRPSKA, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

“Slowly, brothers! Carefully!”

The Syrian captain kept a wary eye on the two big Bosniaks muscling up the first two-hundred-pound missile into the BM-21 Grad launch tube. The four spring-loaded stabilizer fins were strapped against the fuselage so that the missile couldfit inside the tube, but as soon as the rocket motor fired, the straps were burnt away, and the fins deployed upon exiting the tube. A simple, analog solution to a complex problem. Russian design genius at its practical best.

Brkic could hardly contain his excitement watching the first missile loading, a bullet being chambered into an assassin’s forty-round revolver. This was the first step on the journey that would lead to the end of the humiliation of his God and his people, first in Europe and then throughout the world. A journey Brkic would take without Red Wing’s permission, because Red Wing was only an arrow in the quiver of the Almighty, whose plans were never thwarted.

True to his word to Red Wing so many years ago, Tarik Brkic—then known as Rizvan Sadayev—remained in Bosnia after the war ended, married a local Bosniak woman, and became a citizen of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, biding his time until the next opportunity to strike.

And that time was now.

When Red Wing contacted him with the plan to initiate a civil war to defeat the Unity Referendum, Brkic gladly accepted, on condition that Red Wing would give him access to his smuggling routes so that guns, drugs, and jihadi fighters could be brought into the region and transported farther north into Europe as needed.

Causing a civil war through false-flag operations was a tried-and-true tactic of governments everywhere; Red Wing’s own government had done it successfully in Syria only recently. There was no question that Red Wing’s plan would work, but to what end? A civil war would end in the partition of Bosnia—itself a creation of the Western powers, designed to keepMuslims in the region under control. Muslims across the Balkans could form a new, larger Islamic state in the heart of Europe. But what would happen then? At best, neutralization by NATO and Russia, fearing the contagion of Muslim self-governance across the Eurasian continent. Or worse? The extermination of Muslims altogether.

It wasn’t enough for Bosniaks to free themselves, or for Muslims in the Balkans to unite. Red Wing’s government promised to protect them, but it was clear that his government’s ultimate goal was to control them.

The only way to protect Muslims from the two great power blocs was to destroy those blocs. But how? Even now, NATO and Russia were killing brothers all over the planet. Fundamentalist Islam—the kind Brkic practiced—was on the run.

Brkic knew that only NATO and Russia were strong enough to stop the other. His plan would result in a war between NATO and Russia, and such a war would result in the downfall of Red Wing’s government as well.

The destruction of the great powers would pave the way for true Islam to take leadership of Europe first, and then of the world, and, ultimately, the world to come.

Inshallah.