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consciousness as the figures moved around the room, not giving him a fixed position to concentrate on. The questions came fast and furious, further muddling Absar’s mind, but more information bubbled forward, mixed with his tears and blood.
    The men, satisfied that they had gotten all the information they could from him, moved to the doorway. Absar ’s eyes followed them as best he could.
    “My children? Will they be safe?” Absar asked from the cloud of the drug. “Will Minto spare my children?” he screamed at the figure in the doorway. He had a vague impression that he was suddenly alone in the room with his tormentor.
    With a pause, Kamal pulled the hood from his head and put a cigar in his mouth. “Minto never had your family,” he calmly said, pulling a matchbox from his pocket. He shook it to focus Absar’s mind on the next few seconds. He struck a match, letting the air fill with the smell of sulfur, before lighting his cigar, “but we will.”
    Kamal took a deep drag and savored the flavor for a moment. Dropping the lit cigar into the puddle of petrol, he headed towards the hallway that led out of the Chamber. His work here was complete.
    * * *
    Minto was taken quietly and in the dead of night just a few hours after Absar was burned to a crisp in an abandoned building in an industrial area of the city. Neither Minto nor his men were ever heard of again, nor did they ever see the inside of a court of justice.
    Meanwhile, Kamal’s performance in Karachi had set him firmly on a road he coveted, headed straight to the Jungle.

     
    Chapter 4
     
    It was two in the morning when he placed the call. He hadn’t taken into account the time difference between Pakistan and Virginia, meaning that the call would ring unanswered in an empty office. Northwright’s undercover asset had let his impatience get the better of him and the value of the information that he held would lose significance if not passed immediately. His call would have given Northwright an operational advantage because the rest of the organization would not know for days, as it worked through official channels in Pakistan. This call had to get through, he thought to himself.
    Realizing his mistake, the operative dropped the call and quickly searched his mobile for Northwright ’s private cell number and hit send. A groggy, sleep-deprived Northwright stirred in his mistress’s bed as he phone rang on the table beside him. Unwillingly, he rolled away from the twenty-five-year-old plaything in his arms, trying to find his phone in the dark before his mistress woke. Late night calls were normally routed through the control center and they all knew not to call him here, especially here. Married for almost thirty years, this was his only escape from the covert world that he spent his life in. More importantly, Nicole, his mistress, knew nothing of what he actually did for a living. To her, he as a businessman with a bad marriage; all she really cared about were the expensive gifts and being pampered in exchange for her body.
    David Northwright was a seasoned intelligence operative trained in the South American killing fields. From his days fifteen years ago as a lowly field operative to his final posting as Station Chief in Bogota, he had established a vicious history of kidnapping and torture. He had a special position on every wet team The Company assembled simply because of his bloodlust and skill.
    Now, as a retired operative, he worked for the highest bidder doing whatever he was asked to do. The loyalty and brotherhood taught at The Company was leveraged to bring his ‘favorites’ to the dark world he now ruled.
    As Northwright rubbed the sleep from his eyes and read the number, he realized that the perceived change in protocol was much more significant.
    “Hold for encrypted communication,” in a barely-comprehensible voice, Northwright gruffly spoke into the phone.
    “Sir, we have a problem,” blurted the caller immediately. “Minto is