Tripoli's Target (Justin Hall # 2) Read Online Free Page A

talented shooters. They served their purpose.”
    “You don’t think we went too far?” The driver raised the binoculars to his eyes. Justin and Carrie were now pacing in front of the Castle.
    “No. We want to make this fight personal. Revenge is a powerful motivator. In this way, they’ll be more eager. More dedicated. That’s exactly what we want.”
    Faint police sirens sounded in the distance.
    “I’ve seen enough. Let’s go,” the man ordered his driver while looking to his right for police cars. “It’s time to brief Sheikh Ayman and play our next card.”
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Two
     
     
    Canadian Intelligence Service Cairo Station, Egypt
    May 13, 7:45 p.m. local time
     
    George Patterson was struggling to establish a videoconference connection with the CIS headquarters in Ottawa. He kept pressing keyboard buttons and plugging and unplugging wires into the back of his laptop. Despite his efforts, no images appeared on the plasma screen of the Maple Leaf Conference Room.
    George was the CIS Cairo Station Chief and Justin’s direct supervisor, at least in terms of administration. For operations work, Justin and Carrie still reported to Claire Johnson. They had returned to their jobs with the Cairo Station last year, after a CIS internal inquiry had cleared them of any misconduct during a hostage rescue operation in Libya. The inquiry was completed right after the Arctic Wargame mission that almost claimed their lives.
    Sitting across the square table from George, Justin mulled over the evening’s events. As soon as Carrie had finished retrieving all their documents and gear from the Castle, the mukhabarat arrived at the scene. Of course they did not buy the agents’ implausible cover story, according to which two employees of the Canadian Cultural Agency in Egypt had survived a shootout with barely a scratch. Justin and Carrie claimed they found the guns in the coffee shop where they were having dinner and used them in self-defense. Their explanation was unlikely, but that was their cover story and they were going to stick to it. The mukhabarat confiscated their guns and interrogated them for a few minutes. Once Justin produced two Canadian diplomatic passports, the mukhabarat had little choice but to escort them to their embassy.
    The Canadian Embassy was in the lush neighborhood of Garden City, one of the safest neighborhoods in the capital. It was always crawling with Egyptian uniformed police, security contractors, and secret agents. The CIS station occupied several offices in the east wing of the embassy. It had its own entrance, parking lot, and security system. The station served the intelligence and operative needs of the entire North Africa. It was run in a quasi-independent manner from the rest of the embassy—mainly for “plausible deniability” purposes—but still under the umbrella of diplomatic immunity.
    “Here, I think I got something,” George said as a bright blue light flashed on the plasma screen.
    “Great,” Carrie replied with a sigh. Sitting next to Justin, she was impatiently drumming her fingers on the edge of the desk, swinging in her swivel chair. “That was only what, ten minutes?”
    George ignored her and clicked a few more buttons. Then he proudly pressed the Enter key. The image on the screen changed. The three of them gazed at Johnson’s long and narrow face, distorted because of how she hunched over the camera at her work station.
    “Hello, Ms. Johnson, can you hear me?” George asked.
    “Yes, yes, I can hear you. I’ve been waiting here for a while.”
    “Hmmm, we had some technical difficulties with the connection, but, we’re, eh . . . we’re good to go now.”
    “All right. I see you have Justin and Carrie there. How are you two holding up?”
    “We’re fine,” Justin said.
    “Everything’s good,” Carrie added with a nod.
    “OK, now tell me what happened exactly? Your e-mail was quite short.” Johnson spread her