Espionage takes to the twenty-first century playing fields...

Ajza knew about the shahidka

They’d been given the name because their husbands had been killed fighting the Russian army. Some said that the shahidka were cursed, born into trouble and bad luck, and death to any man who took their hand in marriage.

Of course, there was no way anyone could tell if a woman was shahidka. There was no test, and they weren’t marked by God until after they’d lost their husbands.

Women in Chechnya married young, sometimes as early as thirteen or fourteen. The men they married weren’t much older, and they became soldiers the instant someone thrust a rifle into their hands.

Unable to afford mercy to the young troops, the Russian military often killed them. Those deaths doomed the women as well. In their culture, a woman belonged to a man. When a woman’s husband died, she became the property of her husband’s family. She could be separated from her children, have her house taken and be left out on the street—or sold to another.

Or she could end up a Black Widow.

Look for BLACK WIDOW from the Room 59 series April 14th, wherever books are sold!

Countdown to War...

“Give me the code,” the Executioner said.

“Give me my final release. It is the only thing I ask.”

“What is the code?”

“Give me your word. What is on that flash drive is time sensitive. Open it in time and you’ll have an intelligence coup that could save lives, perhaps as many lives as I’ve destroyed in my hubris. Take too long and the window closes.”

“How do you know I’ll keep my word once you give me the code?” Bolan countered.

“Faith is all I have left. Give me your word and I’ll give you the code.”

Bolan looked at the former analyst. The man looked back at him. Tears made his eyes look weak and shiny in the unforgiving brightness of the lamp. His head shook with his suppressed emotion.

“Please,” the man whispered.

The Executioner looked at the traitor. He nodded once.

Look for COLLISION COURSE available April 14th wherever books are sold.

100th Issue of Stony Man!

Tokaido yanked out his earbuds and pumped his fist in the air.

“You have something?” Barbara Price asked.

Tokaido nodded. “Our paramilitary one-stop shopping center migrated just a few miles from Barstow. They’re in Hesperia.”

Carl Lyons fielded the young hacker’s heads-up on the location of Army Gideon’s new quarters.

“Any word if they’ve been in contact with Ahmet or Nouhra?” Schwarz asked as he clipped frag grenades to an ammunition belt already loaded with magazines.

“No,” Lyons reported, “but they just got their mitts on a handful of Gustav rocket launchers. If that’s not special orders for our perps, I don’t know what is.”

“Hesperia’s less than a half hour away, tops,” Blancanales said. “Maybe we can beat the shoppers there and be waiting for them.”

“Not that it matters at this stage,” Schwarz said, “but I keep wondering who they plan to take out with these rocket launchers they keep trying to get
their hands on.”

“Beats me,” Lyons said, “but I’m guessing innocent bystanders.”

Look for the 100th issue of Stony Man - HOSTILE DAWN April 14th wherever books are sold!