Strike Force Charlie Read Online Free PDF

world. Despite some recent setbacks, the lines in and out of Al Qaeda had been burning especially bright for the last month. Many of their key sleeper cells were being activated, a very bad sign. Their illegal money-laundering operations were also spiking, a sure indication funds were being passed down to their foot soldiers. The results so far: car bombings all across Europe, suicide bombings in Afghanistan and Israel. Plutonium missing in Pakistan. Smallpox found in Kenya. And everywhere rumors of nukes and dirty bombs about to go off.

    These things were a thumbprint strategy for Al Qaeda: start a lot of small actions and get U.S. intelligence people running this way and that, all as a diversion from the big hit to come. Something bad was going to happen soon. Li could feel it in her shoes, and she wasn’t the only one. The problem was, there were so many potential targets, it was impossible for anyone to even guess what might be hit and when. The FBI and the CIA were useless, the Department of Homeland Security a sad joke. So that iceberg kept getting closer every day.
    Yes, these were very strange times at work—but not just because of the uptick in terrorist activity. It was more personal than that. The small, secret DSA unit housed inside the Pentagon was now down to just one person: her. Why? Because her boss and his second-in-command had left on assignments two months before and neither had been heard from since. Officially, they were TWA, as in Temporarily Without Assignment. But Li knew this was just spy talk for missing in action. Or worse.
    It was too bad. She really liked Ozzi and Fox. Ozzi was a Navy jg, midtwenties, a top graduate of Annapolis. Major Fox was a tall, handsome, dreamy but very married guy from Alabama, a retired CIA veteran lured back after September 11th. They’d made a great team, the three of them. Ozzi was the cyberspace guy, Fox was the CO, and Li fit nicely in between. As the system intelligence officer, she traffic-copped everything that came through the door. They were all easygoing, good at keeping secrets, and genuinely liked one another. Even now, her eyes misted over thinking about them. She missed them both terribly.
    This also meant she’d been without a boss for eight weeks. What does one do in such a case? The next level of command was the NSC itself, and she wasn’t about to go to them looking for help. She’d even asked Nash for advice. Again, because he was attached to the NSC, he was one of the few people in town who knew what she did, sort of. And they were both at the same security clearance level, so they could talk about such things. Sit tight, Nash had told her.
That was the only thing to do when dealing with the military high command. Carry on as best as you can until someone tells you otherwise.
    Carrying on, to Li’s mind, was fulfilling the last assignment Fox had given her before he and Ozzi disappeared. But this was weird, too: check out every Defense Department employee named “Bobby Murphy.” She had no idea why, but in his last memo to her Fox asked that she cyberstalk anyone in the DoD by that name, even though there were no indications that any of them were criminals or moles or anything other than simple worker bees. Strange. The DoD was a big place. Li had already checked out several dozen people by that name, without finding anything unusual.
    So this whole Bobby Murphy thing was just another mystery to her.
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    The Wizards finished their shootarounds. The lights inside the MCI began to dim.
    Li checked her watch again. The only empty seat in the arena was the one next to her. How long should she wait for this human Ken doll? Why hadn’t he called her? Should she call him? Suddenly her cell phone began vibrating. She retrieved it from her ankle holster. A text message had blinked onto the screen. It was from Nash.
    It read: “Call me ASAP” But he had added: “MTSL first.” Li was surprised to see