“It’s a red handprint,” Torpedo said, arms crossed, chewing the end of an omnipresent cigar, looking down at an egg-shaped, football-sized rock decorated with what could, indeed, only be described as a red handprint.   “Funny time for an archaeology lesson, Chief.”
Tankua scowled at him and shoved his hands into his pockets.  He shook his head.  “It’s not archaeological,” he declared.  “Anything that small would have been carted off by some Anglo tourist as a souvenir.”
“Or on display in some museum?” Torpedo countered, trying to protect his British pride against his friend’s dig.
Tankua shrugged.  “You say ‘tomato.’”
Jim knelt beside the rock, knowing that Tankua would not have drawn his attention to the print if it were not significant.  “Can you get back to the helicopter, Torpedo,” he suggested.  “In case we get more company?”
Torpedo nodded and turned quickly.  “Absolutely,” he agreed.
“And pick up Steele and Whip for me, Buddy,” Jim added.  “They’re sitting ducks up there.”  Into his wrist com, he added, “Any sign of company?”
“Negative, boss,” Steele replied.
“Torpedo’s on his way up,” Jim assured his men.
“Thanks… any idea who that was?”
Jim looked back at the burning wreckage that used to be a helicopter.  “None, but my guess is it has something to do with this guy’s disappearance.”
Jim knew that both Tankua and Steele would see right through his feeble attempts at disinterest.  He couldn’t keep himself from looking down at the red handprint Tankua had found.  Jim kept thinking that maybe John Zebadee had left that handprint.  Perhaps it was some sort of clue.  Jim was certain that Tankua thought so.  He realized there was at least one way to decide whether Zebadee had left the print.
“Uh… Boss…?”  Tankua began, but Jim’s hand was already in motion.  He pressed it flat against the red paint on the rock.
The print was exactly the same size as Jim’s hand.
“…I don’t think…”
Which was when Jim felt a needle pierce the center of his palm with a quick, short jab.  He stood up so quickly that he stumbled into Tankua, who immediately held him fast with one strong arm and grabbed his wrist tightly enough to stop the flow of blood.  When a small bubble of red appeared on Jim’s hand, Tankua put Jim’s hand to his mouth, sucked in the blood and immediately spat it on the ground.  He rinsed out his mouth with a drink from his canteen and spat again.  He held tight to Jim’s wrist.
“Crap,” Jim muttered, “That was stupid.”  He took a deep breath to slow down his heart rate and internally monitored his body to see if anything was changing that might tell him whether he had been poisoned.
“Of all the possible reactions I would have expected from you,” Tankua said.  “Reaching out and touching the damn thing was at the very end of the list… or I would have grabbed you sooner… feel anything?”
Jim shook his head.  His hand was beginning to throb from the pressure of Tankua’s grip.  “I don’t think it was injecting anything…”
“Then what…?”
A gentle trembling in the ground beneath their feet cut off his words.  Above the soft hum of the returning helicopter, there was the unmistakable grinding of machinery.  Jim looked up and pointed.  Sand and gravel were drizzling down around the edges of the gigantic boulder at the base of the cliff.  He grabbed Tankua—who was forced to release his grip on Jim’s wrist—and pulled him away from the cliff wall, fearing that an avalanche had been triggered.
From a safe distance, Jim and Tankua watched as the boulder began to tremble and shift.  “What’s going on down there?” came Steele’s voice over the com.
“I don’t know…” Jim admitted, “but get your butts down here ASAP!”
As the helicopter landed nearby, the purpose behind the boulder’s shifting became apparent: it was lifting slowly from the ground.  Two huge curved hinges became visible, set into the back of the rock, lifting the boulder up and out of the way, revealing a darkng in the cliff side.
Steele and the Whip joined Jim and Tankua.  Torpedo kept his vigil in the chopper—hovering a few feet away from the ground just to the side of theng and behind Jim and the other men, covering them from anything that might come out of the tunnel—or in case the suddenng needed to be closed quickly… by force.
Jim and his men crouched behind rock cover as the boulder came to a stop twenty feet above the ground.  Theng it had revealed was almost perfectly round and obviously artificial.  The floor was wide enough that Torpedo could have easily flown the helicopter into the side of the cliff.
“A trigger,” Jim said after a few moments, when nothing emerged from the cave.  All four men were in battle stances with a variety of weapons at the ready.  “The handprint was a trigger,” he said.  “It wasn’t injecting anything.  It was withdrawing a blood sample.”
When Jim had quickly explained the incident, the Whip asked, “DNA trigger?  How did someone get a sample of your DNA?”
Steele gave Jim a very thoughtful look, and Jim was grateful that there was no reproach in his expression for Jim’s impulsiveness.  “I’m guessing that it’s not set to my DNA,” Jim said.  They all turned to stare at the mysterious cavern.  “It makes a pretty good case for the idea that John Zebadee is my brother.”  He flexed the fingers of the hand that had perfectly matched the red handprint.  “Either that trigger was set to John’s blood type or DNA… and mine matches perfectly… or…”
“Or someone wants you to think so,” Steele concluded for him.
They continued to wait for something to emerge.
Nothing did.
“That trigger was put there for us to find,” Tankua offered as they continued to wait.
“Too easy to remove?”  Steele asked.
Tankua nodded.  “Too inviting… too portable.  It was put there for us to find… and someone wants to be able to get rid of it easily.”
“Same guys as our friends in the chopper?”  Steele asked.
“My gut says, ‘no,’” Jim said… but he didn’t add that he didn’t much trust his gut these days.  The others already knew it.
“No way to say for sure,” Steele concluded, “But I tend to agree.”
“If they wanted us to find this rock,” Tankua added, “Why would they try to blow us up?”
“Unless,” the Whip said, in his usual role as Devil’s advocate, “they put the trigger here in case the chopper didn’t get us.”
Somewhere in the distance, an eagle called.  Tankua and Steele exchanged a guarded smile.
Time passed.
“So why aren’t they rushing out to kill us?” Steele asked.
Jim relaxed his stance, but kept his gun out.  Since his early morning workout, he had met a woman who was the wife of a man who might be his long lost twin.  He’d flown to the tiny cottage that was this missing man’s last known location.  Someone had tried to blow him up, and he’d accidentally activated the genetically coded lock to a subterranean tunnel hidden behind ten tons of Arizona rock.  He wondered vaguely whether it was time for lunch, yet.
“Boss?” Tankua asked.
Jim shrugged and started walking forward, his gun out and ready, raised to his shoulder, but his movements were relaxed.  “If these people wanted us dead, they’d just try to kill us.  Nobody really leaves a clue like this just to lure us in, anymore” he decided.  “They only waste that kind of energy in James Bond movies.  If they wanted us dead, we’d be dead.”
The Whip looked from Steele to Tankua, who simple shrugged and turned to follow Jim.  “Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad idea?”   The three backs moving away from him, towards the darkng before them were the only answer he received.
A deep breath sucked in and blown out, Whip followed, jogging a few paces and then falling into step with the others.
“We’re going in,” Jim said over the COM to Torpedo, “Watch our backsides.”
Steele and Tankua exchanged a bemused glance.  Backsides? They both thought.
Jim crossed the threshold into the artificial cavern and waited for his eyes to adjust.  He felt his men come to a halt around him.  The cavern walls were smooth rock—carefully and expertly excavated into a half-circle with a twenty-foot radius and an expansive floor.  There was a single line of fluorescent lights that ran along the ceiling leading deeper into the side of the cliff.  The floor sloped slightly downward and extended for about a hundred yards before it was lost in the dim light.  Jim pulled a pair of photosensitive lenses from a jacket pocket and slipped them on.  His men followed suit.  They each flipped a tiny switch that activated the digital readouts.  As the crystals in the lenses adjusted to the dim light, Jim could see that the tunnel ended abruptly just beyond the range of his unaided eyesight.  The readout told Jim that the tunnel was 305 feet long, and 22 feet tall, give or take.  The rock was mostly quartz sandstone and limestone—which he had already surmised.  The only heat signatures came from the lights overhead and from Jim’s own men.  Essentially, they were in a cold rock cavern carved into the side of the cliff behind John Zebadee’s meditation shack.
Jim removed the glasses and replaced them into their pocket.  He turned to Steele, who shrugged. “They don’t appear to have a doorbell,” he said.  “I say we let ourselves in.”
“We’ve already been invited, I think,” Jim countered, turning his attention to the corridor again.
Steele nodded and turned his attention forward, as well.
“I get that, too,” Tankua agreed.
Jim raised his wrist and said, “Anything going on out there, Torpedo?”  His own voice echoed back to him eerily from the COM units on the wrists of his men.
“Just a bunch of rocks, Boss,” Torpedo replied.  “Anything in there?”
“Bunch of rocks,” Jim said.  “Keep the channel”
“Roger.”
Jim started walking.  His men moved with him.  Their footsteps were loud and hollow on the bare rock.
“And if that big rock starts to go back down, we all dive under it to get out, right?”  Whip asked.
Jim smiled.  “If that big rock intends to trap us in here, my guess is it’s going to go down much faster than it went up and none of us will want to be going under it.”
Tankua smiled.
“I hope that isn’t supposed to be reassuring,” the Whip said.
Jim Chuckled.  He dropped a hand onto the Whip’s shoulder as they crept forward.  “There’s nothing about this business that’s comforting,” he joked.  The Whip managed a smile.
The cavern ended in a set of massive steel doors that sealed perfectly, both where they met the rock walls and where they met each other in the middle.  Jim’s eyes examined the seals for any sign of structural weakness.  None was easily detectable.  To the right was a smaller door set into the side of the cavern.  As Tankua approached the gleaming steel of the smaller structure… it slid  The Chief sidled sideways, gun held at the ready.  The other men dropped into battle-ready stances.  Nothing happened.  Tankua glanced over his shoulder to see what Jim wanted him to do.
Jim thought about it.  No one would go to such ridiculous extremes to spring a trap they could have sprung several times already.  All of his intuition said he was perfectly safe, and, for some reason, it was that very feeling of safety that made him the most nervous.  “What did you see?” he asked at last.
Tankua shook his head.  “No lights on,” he declared.
Just as Jim was about to tell the Chief to toss in a flare, a man’s voice broke the stillness, saying, “You are perfectly safe, gentlemen.”  The voice was deep, measured and Jim could tell it was computer altered to hide the speaker’s identity; it wasn’t obviously electronic, but just tinny enough that Jim could tell there was more to it than the fact that the voice was coming to them over a speaker in the wall.  “I’m sure you realize that if I meant you any harm, I would already have done so.  James Bond-ian shenanigans are a waste of valuable time in today’s busy world.”
Jim felt the Whip’s hand on his arm and the younger man whispered into his boss’s ear.  “I know that voice, Jim,” he said.  “I’ve worked for him before…”
But before the youngest member of the team could say anything more, the mysterious voice continued.  “Please come into my office, through the door Tankua has been investigating, and make yourselves comfortable.  I will explain why I have need to meet you, and why I have gone to such theatrical extremes to do so.”
“What about the helicopter that attacked us, Dragon?”  the Whip asked.
Three heads turned simultaneously and stared at the Whip in disbelief.  Jim couldn’t imagine how the young man could tell the speaker’s identity, let alone how he could affect such a tone of familiarity.  The Whip’s face was set as if he were trying to decide whether he should feel betrayed by someone he had believed he could trust.  Jim was eager to hear the mysterious stranger’s response.
“I assure you, Samuel, that the person responsible is a mutual enemy,” the man who appeared to be the Dragon told them.  “In fact, I highly recommend you invite Torpedo to land your helicopter in my hanger in case there is a repeat attack.”
Jim looked around again.  Of course, he thought to himself. It’s a hanger... it’s small, but it’s a hanger.  All eyes were on him.  He was looking at Whip, since he seemed to know their elusive host better than any of them.  Jim only knew the Dragon by his reputation as one of the most elusive and dangerous operatives in the private sector.  He was only remotely surprised that he had not known that the Whip had worked with the man before.  No one who worked for the Dragon talked about it or let it be known.  That was one of the stipulations of employment, and the Dragon only worked with people whose loyalty was absolutely certain… which was the same reason Jim had chosen the Whip for his team: he was certain of the Whip’s loyalty as well.  Which is why he was waiting to see what his reaction was.
While the Whip worked through the day’s events in his head, the Dragon reiterated, “You know that if the helicopter attack had been sent by me that you would not have so easily defeated it.”  The Whip conceded the point with a raised eyebrow and a nod of the head.  He knew Jim was interested in his opinion of the situation and shrugged to let his boss know that he felt relatively safe.
We’ve come this far against all logic to the contrary, Jim thought to himself. We might as well see this mystery through.  He nodded in the direction of the door and told Torpedo that he should maneuver the copter into the cavern.
A few minutes later, all five men were seated—although none too comfortably—in what the Dragon had so fatuously called his “office.”  There were five chairs arranged in a semi-circle facing a large screen, which displayed the shadowy image of the man who called himself the Dragon.  The image was blurred and processed so that there was no way to tell anything about the man’s appearance.
“I worked for him once,” the Whip explained, gesturing with his head.  He didn’t bother whispering because he knew the Dragon’s monitors would be extremely sensitive.  “It was a year or so before I came to work for you, Jim,” he added, trying to be nonchalant, but not wanting Jim to think he had held anything back since they had been working together.  “It was the same voice and the same guy on a computer screen with the same hokey shadows and effects.”  He gestured at the room around them.  “His digs were the same back then, too… just not in the side of a mountain.”
“It’s nice that you remember me so fondly, Whip,” the Dragon replied.
“No offence meant, sir,” the Whip told him, but he wasn’t really worried about giving offence.  The man he had worked for had a good sense of humor.  He was trying to judge this man’s reactions against his memories of the Dragon.
“Would anyone care for a drink?” the man on the screen asked gesturing vaguely in the direction of the bar near the wall.  “Although, under the circumstances, I would completely understand any reluctance.”
Jim was intrigued by the man’s sense of the theatrical.  He wondered how he was connected to John and Sing Zebadee, but still had none of the concern about foul play that some of his men were feeling.  The Whip and Torpedo, especially, didn’t trust the situation and felt that Jim was acting uncharacteristically imprudent.  They were logical men, who had ample right to believe that all signs pointed toward some kind of foul play.  Tankua and Steele operated more on their senses of intuition, and they seemed fairly at ease.  Jim fell somewhere between the two pairs of men, and his biggest concern was how much his personal involvement was affecting his decisions.
The room was large, with a high ceiling.  The floor was granite tile, and the walls were natural rock.  In this room, the walls had been allowed to retain some of their original texture, and the stratified layers of the cliff were evident.  The furniture was high-tech, all chrome and glass and plastic.  The chairs in which the men sat were black, high-back executive chairs that swiveled.  There was a large bar against one wall, as well as several bookshelves and a video library.  Interestingly, there was no artwork on the walls, as if the decorator believed that the rock texture was ornamentation enough.
Jim couldn’t help but notice that his own taste mirrored the Dragon’s.  He wondered if it were a coincidence. He doubted it.
When Torpedo had joined them and all five men were seated, Jim looked over his team.  They were some of the best operatives in the field and had been through some pretty tough—and some pretty bizarre—times together.  They worked like a finely tuned clock, each knowing the others strengths and weaknesses and accommodating accordingly when on the job.  To Jim, they were more than coworkers… they were also his friends.  Jim turned to face the computer screen and finally asked, “What do you have to do with John and Sing Zebadee?”
After a short pause, the voice coming from the speakers said, “I’m afraid I must risk offending you by first asking how much your men know about those two.”
Without hesitation, Jim told him, “Everything I know, Dragon… assuming you really are the Dragon.”  He crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap, giving all outward appearances of complete calm and betraying none of the doubts he felt.  “I’m treating this like a standard search and rescue.  My men know all the details.”  He could feel the sense of pride and satisfaction from the men seated around him.  Jim’s trust meant a lot to all four of them.  They knew that most operatives worked in a murky atmosphere of misinformation.
The shadowy figure nodded.  “Of course they do,” he said.  “Then I might as well tell all of you how you and I are connected, Jim, since you will undoubtedly tell the rest of your team, anyway, if you are going to help me.”
“Us help you??”  the Whip asked.  The look on his face told Jim that he couldn’t imagine the Dragon needing help with anything.
“I certainly hope so,” said a familiar voice behind them.
The men whirled in their chairs, and Torpedo and the Whip were already on their feet with their guns out.  Jim saw the woman standing just inside the doorway and knew immediately that they were in no danger; it was Sing Zebadee.
She wore an off-white three-piece linen suit, with one hand casually in a pocket.  Her shirt had a banded collar that wasat the neck, and she stood in the doorway with a breezy confidence that was the exact opposite of the nervous deference she had exhibited in Jack’s interrogation room.  She made no move to come closer, and Jim could see she was waiting to see what sort of response her entrance would elicit.  Jim motioned to Whip and Torpedo, and the two men lowered their weapons, but they did not sit down.
“Welcome to my lair, gentlemen…” she said as she finally moved towards them after noticing Jim’s lack of agitation.  “I am the Dragon.”
“You’re a woman?” the Whip asked.  “Why have you always pretended to be a man?”
The Dragon just smiled as she moved to stand in front of the screen where her persona was still seated in the shadows.  “Do you really have to ask that question, Samuel?”
“Look at our own team, Whip,” Jim interjected.  “How many women work with us?  Someone who has been able to undertake the kind of operations she has would never have been able to get those jobs if anyone knew she was a woman.”  Her smile was one of satisfaction.  Jim gestured for his men to sit down.  The theatrics were starting to make sense, now.  The Dragon had always had a flair for the dramatic, and Jim suspected her flair was very carefully calculated to keep people talking and trying to guess her identity.  If everyone was asking who that flamboyant ingenious man was, they were less likely to suspect he might be a woman, because they would be focused on the theatrics.
When his men were settled again, Jim asked, “Was this whole thing just a scheme to get me here, then?  It seems a bit more complicated than absolutely necessary.  If you wanted to hire me….”
But the shake of her head stopped him.  Her manner changed again, and Jim could tell she was relaxing her persona and trying to be her real self… whoever that might be.  She shoved both hands deep into her pockets and looked deeply into Jim’s eyes.  “My husband really was kidnapped, Jim,” she said quietly.  Jim wondered if there were any way to tell when she was being authentic and when she was acting.  “His name really is John Zebadee, and he really does look so much like you that I’m convinced you are his brother… when you found the trigger thatd the entrance to my hanger and your DNA matched John’s within a fraction of a per cent… I was convinced beyond a doubt.”  She smiled at Jim, and the irony of the situation was not lost on him.  “My husband is your brother, Jim, and I need your help to get him back.”
“Back from where?” Steele asked on cue.
The Dragon turned to Steele, and smiled at the tattoo on his chest.   “The man responsible for the disappearance of my husband and for the attack on you is an old enemy of yours, Jim,” the Dragon declared at last.  “His name is Professor Obb.”
Jim ignored the startled muttering of his men.  Professor Obb had been one of the biggest thorns in the Pack’s side.  When the group had first formed, they had come up against him time and again as he used one nation after another to try to realize his twisted dreams of world domination.  Jim shook his head.  He was glad those kinds of plans were left up to multinational corporations, now, instead of evil scientists.  Fortunately, Obb’s genius and evil had been matched by his insanity, and the Pack had been able to foil his every scheme.  Eventually, one of his own men had turned on him and, as Jim now pointed out to the Dragon, “Professor Obb is dead.”
“ I thought so, too,” the Dragon admitted.  “But the information I’ve gathered is conclusive.  He came back on the scene a few months ago and has been slowly rebuilding his network.  He grabbed John a few days ago, I want John back, for hopefully obvious reasons, and I can’t be directly involved in his rescue.”
“If people find out that the Dragon was involved in the rescue of an unknown stunt man from Hollywood,”  Steele offered, “they’ll start to dig, and when anyone digs long enough…”
“They eventually dig through to China?” the Dragon joked.
Steele smiled back at her.  “My parents were from Hawaii.”
The Dragon shrugged.  “Just a stopping point,” she added.  She began to turn her attention to Jim, but turned back to Steele for a moment.   “By the way, your work with me at the questioning in Colorado was impressive… and very sensitive.  That’s a difficult combination to accomplish.”  When Steele nodded his thanks, the Dragon turned again to Jim.
“But if Obb really is alive… and he kidnapped your husband,” Jim began, “Surely, he must already know who you really are.  Why else would he have taken John?  Is your husband an operative, too?”
The Dragon shook her head and smiled.  Jim saw just a flicker of the shy young woman at the police station.  “No, Jim, there aren’t two superhero spies in your family… well, not if you don’t count in-laws like me.”  She shrugged.  Off to Jim’s left, Tankua chuckled.  Jim tried to keep ignoring the references to John Zebadee as his brother.  “John really is a movie stuntman.  He just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.”   She paused to take in all five men with a sweep of her powerful gaze.  “Believe it or not, the Professor thought he was kidnapping you, Jim.”  Her eyes came to rest on Jim, and the whole situation finally made sense to him.
“I see,” he began, wanting to make sure he had the whole picture clear in his head.  “But how did Obb find your husband, without realizing right away who he was… well, who he was not?”
“Dumb luck,” the Dragon told him.  “Obb was trying to track you down, when he stumbled onto a set where Johnny was working.  I imagine he could hardly believe his eyes and his luck.  So he followed Johnny to the shack that used to be outside my cave and grabbed him… at least that’s how I’ve put it together.”
Jim nodded.  “So now that Obb has him, and has probably figured out that he isn’t me… if you do anything to rescue John, the Professor is bound to put the pieces together, since rescue ops aren’t exactly the sort of thing on which you’ve built your reputation.”
The Dragon wandered over to the bar and poured herself a dark glass of Merlot.  She held the bottle up to Jim and the other men, but they all shook their heads.  Regardless of how much sense this all made, finally, Jim didn’t see the need to take any completely foolish chances.  The woman shrugged and put the bottle down.  Picking up her glass, she turned back to Jim.  “When Johnny didn’t call that night, I knew something was wrong.  I flew out here, saw that all his stuff was missing, and started looking into it.  I managed to find out that Obb was alive… back in business and that he was the one who had grabbed John.” She shook her head and took a sip of wine.  “The Professor has always been sloppy, as I’m sure you know, and when he realized John was not his more famous brother, he started searching the databases to figure out who he had.  He started with John’s driver’s license and went backwards from there.  I followed the trail he left and was as astonished as I’m sure Obb was to find out that my husband was an exact double for one of the most famous operatives on the planet.”  She shook her head.  “I can’t believe I’d never discovered that myself.”  She looked up at Jim again, and he could tell that she was seeing her husband’s face in his own.  “We never suspected that he had a brother, and I’d never seen a picture of you, and—obviously—you and I never met socially.  We spies and adventurers tend to be a rather reclusive lot, after all.”
Jim managed to smile.  He didn’t keep nearly as low a profile as did the Dragon, but there weren’t a lot of pictures of him circulating, either… at least none taken since his first days in the business.  There was never any reason to suspect that he and the Dragon might end up on the opposite sides of an operation, and most of the top people tended to stay out of each other’s back yards.  It was a lot easier to stay alive that way.
“I hope this isn’t in any way offensive to any of you,” the Dragon concluded,” but if there was any way I could handle this on my own, I would.  I can’t touch it… or even come near it, or I risk not only blowing my cover, but also subjecting John to the same life of watching over his shoulder that I’ve chosen for myself.”  There was a short pause while she considered her next statement.  “John doesn’t know what I do.  If it is at all possible… I’d like to keep it that way.”  She turned a strong gaze on Jim.  “I hope you realize the risk I am taking in confiding in the five of you.”  She looked each of the men squarely in the eye in turn.  “You’re the best in the field, all of you, and it’s going to be known very, very soon to the world at large that Pack Leader Jim has a twin brother.  This sort of information, once it is known, propogates very quickly.  It only makes sense that you would jump into this one.”  She let her eyes fall on Jim.  “I’d like to hire you to find my husband, rescue him and bring him home to me.”
All eyes in the room were on Jim.  He knew that his men would follow him on any mission he put before them… especially if Obb really were still alive.  He could see in his men’s faces that they all believed the Dragon’s story and that they knew time was of the essence.  All four of them were willing to put their lives on the line battling one of the most insane and evil men who has ever lived, if only Jim said so.  Thinking about this man, John Zebadee, who seemed to be Jim’s brother after all, had Jim looking at these four men differently… and had him thinking more and more about his other friends, Jeff, Jack, and especially Josh; he hadn’t seen as much of them since he started into this line of work, but in a way, all of these men had been like brothers to him.
Finally, Jim shook his head.  “I’m sorry,” he said at last.  “But I can’t let you hire me for this.”  The look on every face in the room told Jim that these were not the words they had expected to hear from him.  Everyone was shocked that he would refuse to help.  “If John Zebadee was kidnapped by Professor Obb, then it’s my fault… and it’s my responsibility to get him back.  I can’t let you pay me for this.”
The Dragon’s face changed.  It went from disappointment to confusion to understanding to bemusement.  She drained the last of her wine and let the glass hang at her side.  “I had heard you were a man of great honor, Jim.  I’m glad to see that my sources were accurate.”
The smile he shared with her was warm… and then it changed subtly, as both of them realized that they were two of the most respected undercover operatives in the world, and, suddenly, they were family.
Family, Jim thought to himself, as if I’ve ever known what that means.
The Dragon watched Jim in silence for a moment.  She seemed to be weighing him, comparing him to what she had heard of him… and to what she knew of her own husband.  Her face was tight and guarded as she said, “I’m sure you realize that when you leave this hanger, I can offer you no assistance whatsoever.”
Jim nodded.  “And we won’t be able to contact you in any way until we’ve found your husband.”
She nodded.
“What do you know about Obb?” he asked.
She shrugged.  “Just that he’s somewhere in this desert and that he still has a grudge against you.  I don’t know exactly where he is.  He had to be near enough to launch that attack so quickly after your arrival.”
“Did you monitors pick up a point of origin?” Tankua asked.
The dragon turned to him.  “No.  I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting that little attack, either, and all my attention was on your party.  When you get back to your helicopter, I’ll send you all the data I have so you can analyze it yourself.”
Tankua nodded his gratitude and the Dragon turned her attention back to Jim.
Jim considered the possibilities.  “He must be nearby, or he had someone watching the hut, waiting to see if we’d show up, and even if he just has an outpost nearby, they might be able to lead us to Obb.”
“He might be mobilizing as we speak,” Steele added.
Jim looked up at the Dragon, who shook her head, recognizing his unspoken question.  “There’s no movement in the desert.  My guess is he just wanted to get your attention so you’d come looking for him.”
“So we can play out this game on his turf,” Jim agreed.  The idea angered Jim.  To sacrifice the helicopter crew just to get his attention was completely in Professor Obb’s character.  He had always been willing to make huge sacrifices to obtain his goals.  That was what had made him the most dangerous… and the most vulnerable.  If the Professor really was alive and at the center of this situation, then John Zebadee was in grave danger.  The look on the Dragon’s face told Jim that she was very aware of that fact.
Professor Obb was still alive.
John Zebadee was Jim’s long lost twin brother.
The faces watching Jim for a sign as to their next move were trying very hard to mask their concern.  It was only a testament to how well Jim knew these men that he was able to see through their masks.
The next step would be to get Tankua to a computer where he could try to verify the claim about Professor Obb and to analyze the data from the Dragon to see if there were a likely place he might be hiding.  “If this is Professor Obb and not some impostor… no offence, Dragon… but I still need some convincing on that one…”  the Dragon inclined her head to acknowledge that no offence was taken.  “He probably has some bizarre scheme hatching in his twisted brain, and will have some kind of hidden stronghold that puts the Bat Cave to shame…” Jim stopped, looked around the Dragon’s lair, then added,  “Uh… no offence again.”
The Dragon smiled.  “We all have our little eccentricities and extravagances.”
Jim turned all of his attention to his men.  “Do we have any contacts in this region?”
Tankua nodded.  “There’s a reservation near here,” he said.  “There’s some guys I know there.  They know the desert.”
Jim nodded and rose to his feet.  He felt the impetus of a plan taking over.  They would access the computers on the helicopter on the way to the reservation, and Jim could make formal plans with his men on the way, too.  He wanted to get moving, and he didn’t feel comfortable going into details in the Dragon’s office.  He was quite certain she would understand.  He half assumed she would have lost respect for him if he had started brainstorming with his men in her presence.  People in their line of work tended to be rather secretive.
The Dragon extended her hand.  Jim took it.  Her grip was firm and her hand rough.  She was someone who did a lot of manual labor.  They regarded each other for a long moment.  Finally, the Dragon said, “It is interesting that the universe has crossed our paths in this way, Pack Leader Jim.  I am curious to see what lies ahead for us.”
Jim inclined his head in a slight bow and decided it was the sort of moment that required a silent departure.  He should let her have the last word at this meeting.  His men, obviously following Jim’s example, also gave nodding bows and turned with Jim to leave.  As they passed into the hanger and moved towards the waiting helicopter, Jim felt the weight of Steele’s arm fall across his shoulders.
Steele knew that the discovery of a long lost brother and a connection to someone like the Dragon would not be processed for some time.  Jim would keep himself involved in the task at hand—finding John Zebadee and foiling whatever plans Professor Obb was hatching--as long as he could, and he would only deal with the personal side of the situation long after this mission was completed.  Steele was one of the few people--like Jim’s four close friends outside the Pack--who realized that Jim’s career was often something he used to avoid dealing with the messier aspects of a personal life.  He also knew that the casual arm he had thrown over Jim’s shoulders would provide him a little of the comfort the Pack Leader would never request.  Steele wondered, as he often did, what was going to take to break through the wall behind which Jim lived.  Chuckling to himself, Steele realized that his own name was more fitting to his friend than to himself.
As they piled into the helicopter and prepared for take-off, Steele hoped he could find a few minutes to talk with Jim privately.  He really felt he understood what Jim was going through better than the others.  For one thing, he’d known Jim before the Pack had ever existed, and had seen the changes created by a life of espionage.  Secondly, when Steele had found out that he had a nearly grown son, his response had been much the same as Jim’s: denial and disbelief.  Steele hoped his friend handled the upcoming reunion better than he had handled the reunion with Maximillian.
Well, Steele thought to himself, I guess it’s about time I told Jim about Max.