The Cabal

Alan Refkin

Description

Ruled by a mysterious person known as the thin man, the Cabal expands its control over world governments to create a new world order.
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.

Sujets

• Thrillers
• Adventure (Guyana)
• Suspenso
• Mystery
• Cabal
• Adventure
• Moretti
• Cliffhanger
• Drama
• Intrigue
• Suspense
• Thriller
• Fiction
• Action

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 13 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663245274
• Langue: English

Extrait

PREVIOUS BOOKS BY ALAN REFKIN
Fiction
Matt Moretti and Han Li Series
The Archivist
The Abductions
The Payback
The Forgotten

Mauro Bruno Detective Series
The Patriarch
The Scion
The Artifact
The Mistress

Gunter Wayan Series
The Organization
The Frame
The Arrangement

Nonfiction
The Wild Wild East: Lessons for Success in Business in Contemporary Capitalist China
By Alan Refkin and Daniel Borgia, PhD

Doing the China Tango: How to Dance around Common Pitfalls in Chinese Business Relationships
By Alan Refkin and Scott Cray

Conducting Business in the Land of the Dragon: What Every Businessperson Needs To Know About China
By Alan Refkin and Scott Cray

Piercing the Great Wall of Corporate China: How to Perform Forensic Due Diligence on Chinese Companies
By Alan Refkin and David Dodge






THE CABAL


A MATT MORETTI AND HAN LI THRILLER









ALAN REFKIN









THECABAL
A MATT MORETTI AND HAN LI THRILLER

Copyright © 2022 Alan Refkin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.





iUniverse
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-4528-1 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4527-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022917073



iUniverse rev. date: 09/12/2022
















To my wife, Kerry
To Ed Houck



CONTENTS
Prologue

One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen

Author’s Notes
Acknowledgments
About The Author



PROLOGUE
July 5, 2008 — 5:15 a.m. in Musa Qala, Helmand Province, Afghanistan
The approach of the CH-47 Chinook helicopter into Musa Qala wasn’t subtle. At one hundred twenty decibels, the noise produced by the twin-engine, tandem-rotor aircraft could be heard from six miles away. The provincial governor, Nadir Ahmadzai, and five of the town’s elders looked north and saw it as a speck near the three thousand five hundred feet mountains to the west. Not wanting to appear overanxious, they stepped back inside the mud-brick structure, which served as the provincial seat of government, and waited for the foreigners to arrive. As they sat around a weathered rectangular table and drank tea, the rhythmic noise of the helicopter’s engines got louder and the speck transformed into the profile of the Chinook, which was now less than a mile away. That’s when it happened.
Had Ahmadzai and the elders remained outside the mud-brick structure, they would have seen a streak of fire race from a patch of ground three-quarters of a mile in front of them and strike the rear of the aircraft, blowing it out of the sky. The attack surprised the governor because he’d ordered every person in the province not to fire any weapon from sunrise to sundown, long after the helicopter was scheduled to depart. When he heard the explosion in the distance, he was furious that someone had violated his proclamation. Pushing his chair away from the table, scraping its ancient legs on the equally old wooden floor, he stood to go outside to see if he could spot the offender who’d fired the weapon. That was as far as he got before the mud brick building disintegrated in a fiery blast, instantly killing him and the elders.
There were eleven souls onboard the Chinook—seven Army Rangers and a flight crew of four. Five of the seven died when a shoulder-fired Chinese FN-6 missile slammed into the aircraft’s aft rotor, sending pieces of it through the rear fuselage. The four-person crew was killed when the aircraft violently impacted the ground nose-first. The Ranger team’s commander, Captain Matthew Moretti, who was in the first seat directly behind the cockpit, survived but broke his back, the impact rendering him unconscious. The second survivor, Captain Douglas Cray, the regiment intelligence officer, was seated to his right. He had just unfastened his five-point harness to retrieve his briefcase when the missile struck and was jettisoned out the opening where the M134D minigun was mounted when the aircraft crashed. Although he hit the ground hard, he escaped with only scrapes and bruises.
With the aft end of the wreckage in flames and the fire moving forward, Cray knew it wouldn’t be long before it reached the fuel tanks, which lined both sides of the forward fuselage. Wanting to get anyone who survived out of the aircraft, he rushed into the darkened interior through the opening where he was ejected. Checking the cockpit first, he saw that both pilots and the two crew members seated behind them, who were all still buckled into their seats, were lifeless—entangled in the jagged pieces of wreckage that had impaled them. Quickly turning to look at the interior of the broken fuselage, he could see the flames were rapidly growing in intensity and moving towards him. Had it not been for the glow of that fire, he might have missed Moretti, whose seat had broken loose and was partially hidden behind a jagged piece of fuselage.
As Cray started towards him, the interior became a shooting gallery as ammunition began to ignite, randomly sending bullets in every direction. Quickly unstrapping Moretti, he dragged the burly two hundred thirty pounds, six feet, three inches tall Ranger out the minigun opening as projectiles bounced off the steel interior around them. Once clear, and with no idea if Moretti was dead or alive, he put him into a firefighter’s carry and tried to get as far from the Chinook as possible. With the burly Ranger as dead weight, he could only get thirty yards from the wreckage before the forward fuel tanks exploded—the blast force slapping them to the ground as several large pieces of metal streaked overhead, accompanied by a wave of searing heat. When he turned to look at the aircraft, he saw that half the fuselage was missing.
Cray’s face was singed from the searing heat of the blast as he turned Moretti on his back and laid him flat to see if he was alive or if he’d been carrying a corpse. Finding that he was breathing, he reached into his heavily soiled uniform and pulled out his satphone, calling the operations center at Bagram Air Base, three hundred miles away. Although he didn’t know his coordinates, they told him that the Chinook’s emergency locator transmitter activated on impact and transmitted its location. “We’ll be there in two hours. Hang in there,” base ops replied.
“I’m not sure we’ll live that long. We’re attracting a crowd,” Cray countered, seeing a dozen Afghans with guns coming towards them.
“A medevac and a rescue team with significant firepower are on their way. We’ll monitor the GPS coordinates from your satphone. Keep it on and with you. If you’re captured, we’ll know where they’ve taken you.”
Cray ended the call and put the satphone in his pocket, wanting to keep it out of sight.
As he looked at the approaching crowd of Afghans, he saw the focused, determined looks on their faces. From how they held their weapons, he knew that years of fighting had hardened these men. The person leading them was of medium height, had a gray beard, and walked with a limp. Because of his age and that everyone walked half a step behind, he assumed this person was the senior elder, which meant the others would defer to his judgment.
The purpose of his visit was to sign an understanding between the provincial governor and the United States government to bring peace to one of the most lawless areas in the country. Someone thought that agreement was a bad idea and decided to blow his helicopter out of the sky. With the smoking remains of the Chinook behind him, he believed those approaching belonged to whatever group shot down the helicopter and that they were there to clean up loose ends by killing any survivors. The only question in his mind was how to stay alive long enough for the teams to arrive. Given the determination on the men’s faces, he didn’t believe that was possible.
Although he was wearing a sidearm, Cray realized that, compared to the weapons facing him, he’d have as much chance of surviving as a spitball penetrating a brick wall. Even so, he wasn’t going to let anyone detach his and Moretti’s heads while they were alive. If he started shooting before they expected it, he’d be able to get off two or three shots in rapid succession before they hopefully shot them. He decided to start with the senior elder since his death would affect the group the most. However, as he reached for his handgun, he felt a gun ba