Cover of Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

gown kick some terrorist ass.
    Dec looked up from the folder. "Any confirmation she's still alive?"
    Harris shook his head. "None."
    He'd seen a lot since becoming a SEAL, but his insides still shriveled at the prospect of what could happen to Bryn McAllister. Nothing he hated more than someone capable of harming innocents, especially women and children, to further their own agendas. But if Bryn was still alive—and by the contents of her file he knew she was both intelligent and a fighter, so that put points in her favor—they would find her and get her out.
    "We don't see any reason for the hostage takers to kidnap them and then kill them," a Lebanese intelligence officer with a thick accent added. "If they wanted to kill Daoud, they would have made sure he died in the explosion or assassinated him in the aftermath. Kidnapping him and his daughter points to them wanting something more. We expect they'll contact us soon and demand payment of some sort."
    Dec listened as the man outlined the political agenda of the group responsible, found nothing new there. Anger management problems, hated the West, blah, blah. The script was getting old. The extremists recruited young men when they were vulnerable and impressionable, poisoning them with footage of women and children being blown up by coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. They targeted the dispossessed, the ones with bottled-up rage they had no outlet for. Radicalism was like a cancer, metastasizing around 35

    Cover of Darkness
    by Kaylea Cross
    the globe until every country was infected by it. The way Dec saw it, it was his job to help cut out the host tumors before they could spread.
    "Any idea where they might be?"
    "These past few months, Tehrazzi's been active along the Lebanese-Syrian border," Hutchinson said.
    Those dark eyes seemed to bore straight through a person, magnetic and forceful. Though Luke looked relaxed enough, Dec was almost humming from the coiled energy in the man's body. Not a hair trigger. A patient, cunning predator. Smart, and lethal to the core. Maybe the things he'd heard about him just might be true.
    That intense gaze held Dec's as Luke continued. "We have contacts reporting the hostages are somewhere in this area."
    With his forefinger he indicated a mountainous area on a Syrian map near its western border with Lebanon. "There's talk of a possible sighting in a house about ten miles from here. We're waiting for confirmation."
    Meaning they were still in the process of buying off an informant willing to spill the beans. When threats of force weren't an option, money usually worked like a dream. Wave enough American greenbacks at the right person, and one tended to get the information they wanted. Money still made the world go 'round, even if you were a terrorist.
    "And Tehrazzi," Dec mused, "he's part of the Mahdi army in Iraq? Follower of Muqtada al-Sadr?"
    Luke sat back in his chair as he gazed at Dec. "Based in al-Najaf, specifically. We know they're an organization of interest to the Iranians, though their government denies 36

    Cover of Darkness
    by Kaylea Cross
    supplying them any weapons or cash, of course. As a Shi'a, he's a natural fit for al-Sadr's group. Because he was born in Lebanon, he's active there, and has his fingers in all sorts of other pies. The 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah gave him a platform to attract a following of his own."
    "So he's funded by Hezbollah as well as the Shi'a militias in Iraq, who could in turn be funded by Tehran."
    "Exactly. But Tehrazzi is a maverick. He's motivated as much by power as his religious beliefs, so we can't rule out the possibility he's involved with Sunni groups on some level as well. His family connections in Afghanistan also put him in contact with high-ranking Taliban leaders."
    "Any other questions?" Harris rested his elbows on top of a manila folder and regarded Dec calmly.
    "No, sir."
    "Once we get the intel we're waiting for, you'll be wheels up within the