The Icarus Prediction: Betting it all has its price by RD Gupta Read Free Book Online Page A

And he sat down on a boulder.
    She couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell him the reason they knew Bannihammad was coming down this road. The fact was for the last four months she’d been the illicit mistress of Bannihammad’s driver and lackey, a pathetic fellow named Benshabi. On the rare trips he’d made to Lahore, she would skillfully seduce him, making him believe she couldn’t exist without him. And with an adroitness Mata Hari would have admired, she wrung the truth out of Benshabi while suppressing her own revulsion, finally getting the chapter and verse on Bannihammad’s itinerary.
    Then with that information, she requested (more like extorted) permission to be an observer on the kill. Given the distasteful nature of her efforts to obtain the information, the request (demand) went all the way up to the seventh floor of Langley, then over to the Pentagon four-star suite, then down to Delta in Afghanistan.
    And here she was.
    Two and a half hours later, Redigo got a cuff on the shoulder that brought him out of a light doze. Instantly he was awake and brought the binoculars up to his eyes. Barely discernible in the distance were the four trucks headed toward them in the first rays of dawn. There was no dust plume because they were traveling agonizingly slow due to the washboard road.
    Silently, Redigo held out his hand, and Sarah placed the mike into it. He keyed the switch and said, “Torch Leader, this is Vaquero One. We’ve got ’em in sight about five clicks out but movin’ real slow. Pass the word. You ready?”
    “Roger, Vaquero One. We’ve laid enough det cord to blow ’em to the moon.”
    “Some payback on the IEDs they’ve been springing on us. Vaquero One out.”
    What followed was excruciating. All he could do was watch the slow convoy lumber along at a snail’s pace. The image got better, and he could see the open truck was third in line, so he passed the word to the kill team.
    The satellite phone buzzed. Sarah started to reach for it, but the major said, “Piss on it. Just some HQ desk puke wanting to experience virtual reality.” To Redigo, rear area paper pushers had all the redeeming social value of a barnacle.
    “As you say, Major,” replied Sarah.
    The major kept his eye glued to the binoculars as the convoy approached the fork in the road. The first one turned left toward the kill zone, then the second made the turn. But not the third.
    “What the…?”
    Sarah squinted through her binoculars. “He’s going the other way! That little shit!”
    The fourth truck turned left toward the kill zone, while the open truck with Bannihammad lumbered along the other track, alone.
    Redigo looked up at the low cloud cover and hissed, “Where are those damned Predators when you need ’em? That son of a bitch is getting away!”
    With a sense of dread and frustration, Sarah ran through the options. None of them were good…unless…
    “Come with me!” she ordered as she jumped to her feet and ran to the far side of the mesa. She looked down and saw the road hugged the cliff face. Then she hustled back to where she’d left her chute and started yanking off the rocks that were weighing it down.
    Redigo raced over. “And exactly what did you have in mind?”
    She shoved the small drogue chute into the major’s hands while she stepped into the harness and cryptically ordered her escort, “Hold this while I take out the slack! On my mark, run toward the edge with me, and try and keep the lines from snagging!”
    Dumfounded, he said, “You can’t be serious!”
    She snapped the harness closed and said, “I didn’t come all this way to let this scumbag off the hook!” She felt to make sure the grenades were on her belt. “If this works, get the air in here for evac. Otherwise, get the kill team out.”
    “Now wait a minute, you’re an observer here and…”
    The ferocity of her response was unlike anything he’d encountered. “I’ve been screwing a slimeball in Lahore for four months to