The third man in the room showed lots of brown skin, as he’d been stripped down to his jockey shorts. He sat stiffly on a metal folding chair, his hands bound tightly behind his back in plastic cuffs. In contrast to his scruffy captors he was clean-shaven, his thick dark hair was styled, his fingernails and toenails looked recently manicured. He smelled of cologne rather than sweat and fatigue. In further contrast, a comfortable two inches of belly flab drooped over his waistband. According to the word, he was the renegade nephew of a Saudi prince, one of the world’s ultimate rich kids.

But right now he was seriously separated from his Rolex and his Mercedes, and he had a band of duct tape wrapped around his head, covering his eyes. The intell on him suggested he was a dilettante slumming in jihad, that he was soft, that he would crack. So far, the intell was wrong.

Hollywood scrubbed at the stubble on his chin with his knuckles, then he grimaced at the prisoner. He crossed the room in three swift strides, grabbed a handful of the prisoner’s sleek black hair, yanked him to his feet, and shouted, “We know you’re getting set to move something. So what is it, where is it, and who’s doing it?”

The prisoner hunched his shoulders and drew his chin into his chest.

Hollywood’s frustration blew on through to outright anger. He seized the prisoner with both hands and roughly spun him in a circle. “So which way’s Mecca, Omar? Take a fuckin’ guess!”

“Hey, hey, knock it off,” Bugs said, moving in quick. Their good cop/bad cop choreography was getting out of hand. It was the heat.

“Yeah, right.” Hollywood rammed the staggering prisoner’s head against the wall.

“You goddamn redneck-you’re way out of line. Back off!” Now Bugs was shouting as he stepped in between Hollywood and the prisoner, who had collapsed to his knees. They glared at each other, standing so close the sweat on their noses almost merged.