Smoke and Mirrors

46

The private jets carrying the Advance Shadow Team members-a cell comprised of dark ops specialists from four different cities-all arrived at the Memphis airport within the same forty-minute window. They had been dispatched as soon as word that Paulus Styer was in Tunica had been received by their organization. Once they were on the ground, the group was driven to Millington Naval Station, where two Yukons, already loaded with their equipment, had arrived in a C-130 cargo plane from North Carolina. The Millington gate guards had been instructed by their base commander to ignore the arriving team members and to wave their matching Yukons through when they exited the base.

The men in the cell knew each other well because they had worked numerous missions together, but they knew each other only by the names they had been assigned. They were ex-military Special Forces members who had died in combat or in training accidents. Their given names, along with their histories, had been buried with the bodies-or parts thereof-supplied by the shadow cell to fill their coffins.

The search for Paulus Styer, who was called Cold Wind by the CIA, had been going on for over ten years, and had cost six of the shadow team’s elite professionals and millions of dollars. The team members knew that Paulus Styer was a continuing top priority, and that the men who ended him would be generously rewarded. Even as the shadows traveled toward Tunica, Mississippi, other units were moving to join them.