Plus he didn’t trust the man he was with. Yeah, Matthias was the head of the organization with a direct line to God. Yeah, Jim had trained with the guy way back when. Yeah, he’d been under him for the last decade.

But all of that just made him more certain he didn’t want to be alone with the big man-and yet here they were, at a “village” in the fine township of Nowhere-anyone-could-find-a-body-ville.

A gust of wind went Nike across the flat landscape, sprinting over the sand, picking up those tiny little particles, and carrying all of them right smack into the collar of his digital-fatigues. Beneath his black, lace-up boots, the ground was constantly shifting, as if he were an ant walking across the back of a giant and irritating the piss out of the bastard.

You began to feel that at any minute, a great palm could come down out of the sky and flatten you.

This trek to the east had been Matthias’s idea. Something that couldn’t be discussed anywhere else. So naturally, Jim had worn a Kevlar vest and about forty pounds of weapons. Along with water. MREs.

He was a pack animal for real.

“Over here,” Matthias said, ducking into the doorless entry of one of the stone structures.

Jim paused and looked around. Nothing but tarps doing the cabbage patch, as far as he knew.

He got out both his guns before going inside. Bottom line? This was the perfect locale for a forcible inquisition. He had no idea what he’d done or what he’d learned to warrant an interrogation, but one thing he was clear on-there was no reason to run. If that was the “because” he’d been brought here for, he was going to go in and find another two or three XOps guys in there to work him over while Matthias asked the questions. If he bolted? They’d just hunt him down all over the globe, even if it took weeks.