The Executioner's Game

Summary

Luther Green is the very best at what he does. But the mastery of his profession is nothing he can brag about. It's nothing for which he will ever be officially recognized and it will never earn him a large paycheck. But there is a high likelihood that Luther's proficiency at his job will get him killed. Luther Green is a government assassin. For more than a decade, he has traveled the world, surgically eliminating America's enemies, never questioning his orders while performing as reliably as death itself. But his new assignment threatens to change all that. Luther's superiors have designated his new target as Alex Deavers -- the agent who taught Luther everything he knows and a man now considered to be a rogue agent on the edge of insanity. For Luther, a man normally more concerned with determining the how of an assignment than the why, his new duty forces him to confront questions he's never before had to consider. Why is he being sent to kill someone on American soil when all of his previous assignments were done abroad? Why doesn't his agency notify the FBI? Perhaps most important, why does he get the feeling that his own agency is spying on him? As Luther seeks to uncover the clues that will lead him to his prey, he slowly realizes that Alex is on a mission of his own, playing a cat-and-mouse game with his former apprentice while setting in motion a plan that could kill millions. Luther begins to suspect that the only person who can give him the answers he needs is the psychotic madman he has been ordered to execute. Luther follows a perilous trail that takes him into the most dangerous territory he has ever encountered. He is just a pawn in a twisted chess match, but a pawn may transform itself into the game's most dominant weapon. Now he has just days to learn the rules and employ all of his skill and training to find the truth. But to defeat the deadly forces against him, Luther Green must win the most dangerous game of all.

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Excerpts

The Executioner's Game

Africa

It was a bad sun. That's what the locals said. It wasn't customary to think of the sun as something capable of negative energy, but you couldn't convince the dark men of that. Periodically they would glance up at it fearfully while executing their harsh duties.

The men unloaded crates and stuffed boxes from a flatbed truck, carrying the items to transports, three big trucks -- one of which was being worked on by two mechanics. The boxes overflowed with packing materials, making the containers look bloated and sick. As the men traversed back and forth from the truck to the plane, they muttered in their native tongue, looking up at the sun as if it might detach from the heavens and roll over the land like a molten boulder.

The sun seemed to appear closer to the earth than usual. It filled the horizon, lurching above the low, rolling hills and bright green bush like a sniper who'd come too close to his prey.

The hot rays spilled beyond a low brownish green mountain range and into the thick jungle, landing finally on the cracked ground of the road in Laundi, a small village that wasn't even a speck on the map between the Rwandan border and Kisangani in Central Africa.

United States Secretary of Commerce Donald Howard felt a sense of dread as he stood on the side of the road near the beginnings of the bush. But it wasn't the sun that made him nervous.

What did fill the secretary with dread were the sights he'd seen in the last few weeks, the utter ruin and death he'd witnessed in Southern and Central Africa.

The AIDS virus had devastated the continent in the last two decades. Howard had been sent by the president to survey the condition of the area and determine the size of a package of economic aid.

As an African American, Howard had taken on the assignment with pride and determination. He'd hoped that his trip to the motherland would result in a cultural awakening for him, a longlost connection to his past. What he found in Africa was quite different: economic mayhem, corruption, intra-African racism, a crumbling infrastructure, and a dispirited people.

And death.

The epidemic had swept the land like a biblical plague, tearing life from the bosom of civilization. Villages were turned into ghost towns, streets were lined with the sick and dying, and rivers were clogged with corpses whose souls had been ripped from their bodies. It was hell on earth, he thought, devastation like none he'd ever witnessed. And for all his authority, he was powerless to help any of these people. A tiny organism had laid waste an entire civilization, and all he could do was watch.

"We're almost ready, sir," said George Gorman. He was one of Howard's Secret Service agents. "The mechanics have pretty much fixed the engine problem in your transport."

Howard was startled for a moment and then looked directly into the eyes of the man who'd just spoken.

Agent Gorman was a tall, lean man of forty or so. He had bright blue eyes and a jaw that was wider than it should have been. It made his head seem a little too big on his shoulders and gave him a look of menace that had served him well in his profession. Gorman was one of two Secret Service men assigned to Howard. Gorman and his partner in turn led a security team comprised of four soldiers, two marines, and two army officers. He stood next to Howard, waiting for him to respond.

"How much longer?" Howard asked impatiently.

"About a half hour, sir," said Gorman.

"Fine," said Howard. "I just want to get out of here as soon as possible. Go and sit on the mechanics."

Gorman nodded and ran off quickly. Howard took a deep breath, letting the strong odors of the land into his lungs. He looked out at the beauty of Africa and was struck by the irony of the wreckage that lay behind it. It was truly a dark continent, he thought.

He didn't like the thought of going to Rwanda by land, but the plane the army had provided for them had malfunctioned. And now the armored truck was down as well. It seemed fate was conspiring to keep him in this desolate area.

Howard would have a compelling story to tell the president, he thought, and he hoped the American government would not hesitate to come to the assistance of these afflicted people ...

Excerpted from The Executioner's Game by Gary Hardwick
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