Brothers In Arms Read Online Free PDF Page B

right. We get the same take from the same people.”
    “Which goes back to my original statement. We’re all working on the same side of the street.”
    “You want me to approach Dale and see if he’d take a contract? Doing what?”
    “This Uday that got killed . . . he’s one of a small group of Iraqi exiles we’ve been watching. They’re related, either by blood or by the time they spend together in Saddam’s prisons. For some reason, why we don’t know, what’s left of Saddam’s apparat is looking for these people. They got close enough to put the Twins to work on taking them out. One down, and there’s only a woman and one other man left. The woman is married to one of them, she’s not a player. But the man may be.”
    “Where’s the other man and the woman?”
    “Still in Minneapolis. The woman is in a private-sector safe house with a crew around her; the man is a psychiatric patient at a specialty clinic at the University of Minnesota. The Torture Rehabilitation Center. They’re used to getting patients on somebody’s hit list, so they maintain low profiles for their patients and practice decent security. Problem is, they’re not prepared to deal with the Twins. So that’s where we come in. We want to take over protection of this man and move the woman to a secure location. We want Dale Miller to be a team leader of the protection team on the man.”
    Callan pushed his Styrofoam plate to the middle of the coffee table, then cracked his knuckles one by one. “Not to blow my own horn, but I’ve got top-shelf executive protection teams I can rent you, Ray. Ex-Delta, SEALs, Secret Service . . . I’ve got shooters as well as technical support. Why run a contract with a loner when you can get a top flight team?”
    Ray bobbed his head in quick agreement. “Dale was one of us. As far as I’m concerned, he’s still one of us. We want to keep things compartmented, but you’re right, you’ve got the resources. We wantDale and a contract crew for deniability, with you as a fallback.”
    “Little conflict of interest here, Ray. If I succeed with your favor, I’m doing myself and the company out of a tasty bit of business.”
    “There’s a substantial consultation fee to soften the blow. And favors in the favor bank.”
    “There’s that,” Callan conceded. “Me and Dale go back to Delta. So if I can help him, I will. What are you not telling me?”
    “Full disclosure,” Ray said. “I’d like to bring Dale in myself, but there’s that ugly bit of history between us.”
    Callan stood up, wiping his hands with a napkin, then balled it up and dropped it into his plate. He went to Ray’s big window and looked out. “Jonny Maxwell drove a wedge into everybody. He needed to die sooner than he did.” He paused for a moment, then said, “I’m sick of this traffic. It takes forever to get anyplace. You know it took me forty minutes to get here?”
    Ray leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankles. “Will you do this for me, Mike?”
    “Minneapolis is a pretty city. I’d like to see Dale again, and it’d be nice to get out of here for a day.”
    Ray got up and went to the window and stood beside Callan. “Thanks, Mike.”
    “I’m doing your dirty work again, Ray. Big favors in the favor bank.”
    “Done.”

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
    Youssef bin Hassan stood outside the Central Train Station in Amsterdam, part of the milling crowd composed mainly of young people on holiday from all over the world. He was a thin, stoop-shouldered young man with a perpetually narrowed look on his face, dressed casually in baggy denim pants, light boots, and a white collared shirt open at the neck. He had a courier bag slung over his shoulder, weighty with his laptop computer, the latest I-Book from Apple.
    It was a beautiful day in Amsterdam, clear and warm, and the sunlight glittered from the windows of the hotels that looked over the canals. He stood by the arched