The Devil's Playground

by Michael Reagan

hand.

  Clara took it firmly.

  Ali Mansoor was stood by the grave of Rob Ashley with Navjot in Arlington National Cemetery. He was waiting for the man who had just gotten out of the black Mercedes to join them.

  Clara had set up this meeting, for the purpose of cleaning up the mess that David Young had caused.

  The last time they had met in Iraq during the First Gulf War, both of them had been young men. That meeting had been polite and courteous as they planned the raid to take out one of Saddam's scud missiles with a dangerous payload. He doubted this one would be.

  Within moments the tall Englishman reached them with his ever-present number 2 behind him. Ali offered his hand. Thomas didn't take it. Instead he offered a piercing stare.

  Ali thought they were the eyes of the Devil.

  It was Yossi who had set up this meet with the old Jewish assassin at his cabin in woods of Belorussia on the border of Poland. It was cold and damp and the dogs of the man kept their eyes firmly on him, Yossi, and Mikhail.

  "Did you bring the money?" asked the old man.

  Mikhail placed the Samsonite suitcase on the table and then opened it.

  The old man who looked like an old wizard smiled.

  "I have a wedding to pay for," he explained.

  "Do you wish to count it?" asked Mikhail.

  "No, I trust Yossi," he said.

  David Young stood by the banks of his family's 37,000-acre working Montana ranch on the edge of Lake MacDonald, fishing for trout. His mind was mulling over the problems his defense was facing and the treachery of Dowling who had given evidence to the Select Committee that it was he who had told him that he planned to bring Okazaki to power but he wasn't bothered. It was his turn next and he had the files ready to blow Parker's Presidency out of the water.

  Behind him stood his bodyguard, a young man from Ohio who he had dragged up here with him. Suddenly his eyes were drawn to the appearance of three sets of eyes in the brush.

  "John," said David in an effort to draw his attention to the movement.

  Trackers will tell you there are things to do to survive an attack by wolves. Young and his bodyguard did none of them.

  The first is to not offer eye contact, as wolves see it as a challenge. John pulled his weapon and looked at the lead wolf advancing at him. He didn't see the attack from the wolf behind as it latched on to his neck, forcing him to drop the pistol.

  Young panicked. He dropped the fishing rod and attempted to run, the second worst thing you should do.

  When a wolf attacks the advice is that you should roll up into a fetal position and use your arms in a blocking motion to protect your neck so that the wolf doesn't get a hold of its typical bite zones. Again in their panic, neither Young nor John did that.

  Screams began to echo out around the woods.

  The old man finished watching the attack with his binoculars. He smiled as he watched his instruments of death tear out the throat of the man in the picture he was holding in his hand.

  "Zoya and Eprhiam will able to build that house on the West Bank now," he thought, referring to his granddaughter and her husband.

  With the attack over he started his walk back to his van to wait for his wolves to return before driving back to airport at Helena so he could take the plane that his friend Yossi had arranged to take him back to Haifa.

  THE END

  Author's Note

  The Devil's Playground is a work of fiction. With the exception of current incumbents of The President of the United States, The President of the Russian Federation, The Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, The Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, The Secretary of State of the United States of America, The Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Russian Federation, The Foreign Secretary of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the senior officers of the United States and Russian Military that represent their countries, and respective Chiefs of Staffs, all the names and characters are fictitious. All their conversations and for that matter the incidents that happen throughout the story are also product of the author's imagination or have been used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual persons other those stated, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

  About the Author

  Michael Reagan is a nom de plume. Initially working as an analyst specializing in Corporate Solutions & Planning for a private bank, he was there right at the start of the crazy years of Yeltsin-led Russia. Gaining first hand insight into how the Oligarchs did business in the early days of a Russia struggling to embrace capitalism.

  Some of Michael's experiences have provided in part, the background to his Litchfield character, the chief protagonist of the series.

  By the end of the 1990s, employed in a rather peculiar role, within a private office of a royal family in the Middle East he found himself gaining insight not just into the workings of the region's royal families and their various governments, but also seeing just how Natural Resources have and will continue to effect the "doing of business" between the governments of the world and the multifarious characters involved.

  Negotiating everything from hunting rights, the paying of gambling debts of young sheikhs, to oil and gas deals, he refers to it as a life that was never dull but certainly not for the fainthearted and one that often found him questioning his "Devil's Bargain."

  Michael doesn't maintain a website or a twitter page, but you can find him on Facebook if you would like to drop him a line.

  The Devil's Playground is his second novel on the adventures of the Litchfield family.