The Cabal
A Matt Moretti and Han Li Thriller
by
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Moretti and Han Li were returning from their honeymoon in Athens, Greece, landing at the Washington Dulles International Airport at five in the afternoon. A federal official greeted them at the aircraft door and escorted the couple through the VIP section of customs and immigration and into the baggage claim area, where Cray was waiting. “You both look rested,” he said after shaking Moretti’s hand and hugging Han Li. “How’s Jehona?” Han Li asked, referring to their adopted fifteen-year-old daughter, an orphan and former human trafficking victim who was now attending a boarding school in Virginia. "She became quite the celebrity when the president's helicopter returned her to campus. The school's security is taking her safety very seriously after they were told a Secret Service agent would be shadowing her." The president told Han Li and Moretti that he’d tell the Secret Service to keep an eye on her so that they could focus on their job and not worry that a wacko would try to get to them through her. With the couple having only carry-on bags, the three walked outside. "Thanks for the ride home,” Moretti said, “but you also have another reason for being here.” Cray smirked as he shook his head in acknowledgment. "Remind me never to play poker with you. What gave me away?" "You look as nervous as an EOD rookie about to disarm his first bomb." “That bad?” Moretti nodded. Upon opening the right-side rear door of the black Suburban and letting Moretti and Han Li inside, Cray collapsed to the ground. Because only the sound of the car engine could be heard, Moretti thought he’d tripped. When he saw the blood on his jacket, he realized that Cray had been shot and quickly pulled him into the vehicle. The door was almost shut when they heard the dull thud of bullets bouncing off the vehicle’s bulletproof exterior. "Get to a hospital fast," Moretti yelled to the driver, who switched on the siren and flashers and peeled rubber as they left the terminal area. "Let's see what we're dealing with," Moretti said as he knelt on the floorboard with his back to the driver’s seat. Han Li knelt beside him. They removed Cray's jacket and shirt to try and find the wound, seeing the impact point of the bullet in his back and blood coming from the hole. Turning him over, they didn’t see an exit wound, indicating the bullet was still lodged in his body. "He’s losing a lot of blood. The bullet nicked something,” Moretti said as he tore off a piece of Cray’s shirt and pressed it tightly against the wound. "Call Bonaquist and tell him to alert the hospital that we’re inbound with a gunshot victim who’s bleeding out. Every second is going to count because this doesn’t look good. He’ll need …,” Moretti said, grabbing Cray’s dog tags, which he always wore, “O positive blood." Han Li got the name of the hospital the driver was racing to and called Bonaquist. The former Secret Service agent was the number two operative behind Moretti, and Han Li was number three. On the edge of consciousness, Cray weakly grabbed Moretti’s shirt and pulled. Although there was little strength in his grip, Moretti got the message and bent down, putting his left ear near his mouth. "The Cabal," Cray said in a barely audible voice. “What does that mean?” He never got a response because just after he said those words, his face went blank, and his eyes and mouth remained open. Moretti felt his neck for a pulse. There was none, and he began CPR. "Faster," Han Li told the driver in a voice that said every second mattered. The driver wove in and out of traffic on his way to StoneSprings, a hospital eight miles west of the airport and twenty minutes away in light traffic. Weaving in and out of traffic with an expertise that would have made the director of Gone in 60 Seconds proud, and thanks to the siren and flashers, he made it to the hospital ten minutes after leaving the terminal. Even so, Cray had lost an enormous amount of blood and looked on the fringe of hypovolemic shock, where the body’s tissues and organs couldn’t get enough oxygen and became damaged. Although the CPR Moretti performed got Cray’s heart to beat again, his pulse was almost nonexistent. Four medical staff were waiting with a gurney at the emergency room entrance and got two IV’s going before they rushed the lieutenant colonel inside. While the driver pulled the vehicle forward and out of the way of the entrance, Moretti and Han Li entered the hospital lobby and followed the signs to the waiting room. As they walked, he told her what Cray said. "The Cabal? I never heard him say that word before.” "I don't know what he was trying to tell me, but I will. When I find out who did this, I will kill everyone involved. Count on it," Moretti said in an angry voice. "Mind if I help?
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About the Book
The Cabal has secretly expanded its grip on world economies, governments, corporations, and other centers of influence for decades. Founded by a mysterious person known as the thin man, its goal is to create a new world order—an authoritarian and borderless world under one government. With its members in strategic positions within global technology and social media companies, senior government positions, and enormous investment funds, they’ve pushed its narrative to billions of users until their beliefs have become mainstream. Those within the Cabal don’t want to change the world for altruistic or egalitarian reasons. Instead, they want to establish perpetual global monopolies that would ensure extreme generational wealth while advocating that centralized government control creates greater economic stability, ratchets down global tensions, and establishes a society of equals. Standing in the way of this seemingly unstoppable juggernaut is Nemesis, an ultra-secret off-the-books organization that doesn’t follow a rulebook. In this latest Matt Moretti-Han Li thriller, when the Cabal discovers Nemesis is after them, it uses its considerable global influence and piles of cash to frame them as terrorists. Hunted by several governments, including their own, and with time running out, they must stop the Cabal before it initiates a world-unifying event that will forge its global consolidation of power and create a new world order.
About the Author
Alan Refkin has written eleven previous works of fiction. He is the co-author of four business books on China, for which he received Editor’s Choice Awards for The Wild Wild East and Piercing the Great Wall of Corporate China. In addition to the Matt Moretti-Han Li action-adventure thrillers, he’s written the Mauro Bruno detective series and Gunter Wayan private investigator novels. He and his wife Kerry live in southwest Florida, where he’s working on his next Matt Moretti-Han Li novel, The Chase.