"Ekabela deserved to die." Jack said. "He more than deserved it and you know it. He leveled villages, committed genocide, ran the drug industry and stole from the UN when they tried to get food and medicine to the area."

"That's right, but look who stepped into his shoes. General Armine, more feared and hated than Ekabela. and how strange that the transition of power went so smoothly."

"What the hell are you trying to say, Ken?"

Ken looked up at the clouds obscuring the sliver of moon, watching them spin slowly and lazily, a dark veil with nowhere to go. He remembered the pattern of the clouds in the jungle, the sway of the canopy and the smell of his own sweat and blood. "I'm saying we never make things personal, but someone has been doing just that for us. I don't like it and I like this job even less. I think we're being set up again. I just don't believe in coincidences, and this is a huge one."

Jack swore under his breath and fit his eye to the scope, carefully surveying the mountain cabin several hundred yards away. "He's in there with his wife. I could take him out and we could just walk away clean; no one would be the wiser."

"Just our entire team."

Jack flashed a small, humorless grin at his brother. "They'd help me and you know it. They detest the man nearly as much as I do."

"Someone wanted Armine in a position of power. Someone here, in the United States. I've thought a lot about this, Jack. Every assignment we've been sent on in the past year has created a void, a hole for some other lowlife to step into. From Colombian drug lords to General Ekabela in the Congo, we're creating a vacancy in those positions of power and someone is manipulating that. I just don't happen to think it's the president of the United States." He cast his brother a quick glance. "Do you?"

Jack swore again. "No. I think we're screwed."