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PREFACE

In the dark and secret heart of Washington, there is a short and very covert list It contains the naerous to the United States, her citizens and interests, that they have been condemned to death without any attempt at arrest, trial or any due process It is called the kill list

Every Tuesdayin the Oval Office, the kill list is considered for possible amendment by the President and sixtheeneral coerous private army This is J-SOC, which is supposed not to exist

On a cold , a new name was added to the kill list He was so elusive that even his true nae machine of American counterterrorism had no picture of his face Like Anwar al-Awlaki, the American/Yemini fanatic who preached hate sermons on the Internet, who had once been on the kill list and iped out by a drone-launched missile in North Yemen in 2011, the new addition also preached online So powerful were his ser to ultra-radical Isla murders in its name

Like Awlaki, the new addition also delivered in perfect English Without a name, he was known simply as the Preacher

The assigniven to J-SOC whose CO passed it down to TOSA, a body so obscure that ninety-eight percent of serving US officers have never heard of it

In fact, TOSA is the very s down those terrorists who seek to hide themselves from American retributive justice

That afternoon, the director of TOSA, known in all official communications as Gray Fox, walked into the office of his senior manhunter and laid a sheet upon his desk It simply bore the words “The Preacher Identify, Locate, Destroy”

Under this was the signature of the commander in chief, the President That made the paper a Presidential Executive Order, an EXORD

The matic lieutenant colonel in the US Marine Corps of forty-four who also, inside and outside the building, was known only by a code He was called the Tracker

1

If he had been asked, Jerry Dermott could have put his hand on his heart and sworn that he had never knowingly hurt anyone in his life and did not deserve to die But that did not save him

It was ly loosening its grip But there was snow on the high peaks around the state capital, and the wind that ca on the streets were huddled in warislative Services Office at 700 West Jefferson Street

He erand entrance and walked down the steps from the sandstone walls toward the street, where his car was parked in readiness He nodded in his usual genial way at the police officer atop the steps by the portico door and noted that Joe, his faithful driver ofaround the limousine to open the rear door He took no notice of the ure that rose froan to move

The figure was clothed in a long dark overcoat, unbuttoned at the front but held closed by hands inside There was some kind of fretted skullcap on the head, and the only odd thing, had anyone been looking, which they were not, was that beneath the coat there were no jeans-clad legs but soarment was an Arab dishdash

Jerry Dermott was alress he saw on Earth was a swarthy face staring at hi else far away The overcoat fell open and the barrels of the sawed-off shotgun rose froled inside the fabric

The police would later establish that both barrels were fired siauge buckshot, not the tiny granules for birds The range was around ten feet

Due to the shortness of the sawn barrels, the shot spread was iress him to turn and reel back He had a sidearm under his jacket, but his hands went to his face and he never used it

The officer atop the steps saw it all, drew his revolver and ca down The assailant threw both hands in the air, the right hand gripping the shotgun, and screa The officer could not knohether the second barrel

had been used and he fired three times At twenty feet, and practiced with his piece, he could hardly miss

His three slugs took the shouting man in the center mass of the chest and threw him backward He hit the trunk of the liutter Figures appeared from the portico doorway, saw the two bodies down, the chauffeur staring at his bleeding hands, the policeripped, pointing doard They ran back inside to call for backup

Two bodies were reue and Joe to the hospital for attention to the three pellets that had lodged in his face The congressman was dead, chest penetrated by over twenty steel balls that had entered his heart and lungs So also the assailant

The latter, stripped naked on the ave no clue to his identity There were no personal papers and, oddly, no body hair save his beard But his face in the evening papers yielded two infore of town identified a student of Jordanian parentage and the landlady of a boardinghouse recognized one of her lodgers

Detectives ransacking the dead man’s room took away many books in Arabic and his personal laptop computer The latter was downloaded in the police technical lab It revealed so no one in the Boise police headquarters had ever seen before The hard drive contained a series of lectures, or ser eyes and preaching in fluent English

The o his own personal conversion from heresy to Muslim truth He should, within the confines of his own soul, confiding in and trusting no one, convert to Jihad and become a true and loyal soldier of Allah Then he should seek out some notable person in the service of the Great Satan and send him to hell, then die as a shahid, a martyr, and ascend to dwell in Allah’s paradise forever There were a score of these sere

The police passed the evidence to the Boise office of the FBI, who passed the entire file to the J Edgar Hoover Building in Washington At the national HQ of the Bureau, there was no surprise They had heard of the Preacher before