Fluorescent lights buzzed with a low, mechanical hum in the subterranean parking garage of the Manhattan safe house.
Tires screeched against the polished concrete. A convoy of three armored SUVs abruptly halted in a tight, defensive triangle near the service elevator. Before the engines even cut out, Mark’s tactical operators spilled from the vehicles, forming an outward-facing perimeter with their rifles held at low ready.
The heavy reinforced door of the center vehicle swung open.
Victor Lim, the patriarch of the Southeast Asian consortium and a key signatory of the Bloodbird protocol, stepped out into the damp, subterranean air.
He was a man who had spent three decades manipulating maritime trade routes and commanding private armies across the Pacific. Today, stripped of his luxury
