As Dan Gabriel steered his rental car north on Highway 101 north of Paso Robles, his cell phone rang.
"Gabriel," he answered.
"You stopping at the In-N-Out Burger down the road?" Jack Kilgore's voice asked.
"How'd you know where I am?"
"You've got a new wireless phone, with the GPS locator."
"Oh, I forgot… So, did you learn anything?"
"A lot," Kilgore said. "Stone's a real mensch. Plus he's a natural twopercenter, highly lethal, capable, always under control. Back then, if you wanted somebody-or multiple somebodies-dead, you sent Stone. Then he got religion or something, requested and got training for paramedical rescue. Saved a lot of lives. Then he left and becomes a hot-shit doctor."
"Not the kind of person I want to terminate," Gabriel said
"Roger that. Makes me question the General more than I ever have before."
Silence filled the connection with unspoken doubt.
"And a lot of freaky stuff's going down in Mississippi, not far from the old prisoncamp hospital the General was in. I've got some of my guys keeping an eye on things. I structured it as an exercise to assess the operational competence of the Homeland Security screwups driving the show there.
"A troop of Cub Scouts could do a better job at radio discipline. Operational security's full of holes. It's the usual bullshit in a china shop thing, not surprising since Brown and his Customs bozos are running things. They're the ones who nailed all those innocent Muslims' butts to a tree after 9/11 just to make bureaucratic brownie points. They've now circulated photos of Stone and Jasmine Thompson as wanted fugitives."
"Charged with?"
"Murder and drug running out of L.A."
"Marvelous,"
"And, Dan?"
"Yeah?"
"Brown's been calling Clark Braxton's cell phone an awfully lot."