Cobra Strike by J.B. Hadley

a breach of etiquette.”
    “Is this Institute a CIA front?” Mike asked.
    “Certainly not. No doubt some members of the Institute are also members of the CIA or NSA. I wouldn’t know.”
    “What did you send the three to Afghanistan for?”
    “To study conditions there.”
    Mike smiled at the evasiveness of this answer. “I’ll be frank with you. It sounds to me like you deliberately sent in those
     people to have them trapped and caught by theRussians. Right now I’m second-guessing you to try to figure out why you did that. And why you want to involve me.”
    Lowell looked angry, but a heavy man on the opposite side of the table laughed and said, “I think it’s reasonable for you
     to suspect us of some convoluted conspiracy in which things that seem to be one thing turn out to be another. Yet you would
     be surprised at how easy it is for clever men, confident of their own abilities, to do something stupid and irresponsible.
     But that is what we did, and now we are trying to extricate ourselves with a minimum of damage to the Institute and, of course,
     to our own precious reputations.”
    Mike was satisfied with the sincerity of this answer. He next asked, “Were your men armed?”
    “They may have smuggled in a few rifles and sidearms in a spirit of youthful irresponsibility,” Lowell said hurriedly at Campbell’s
     side.
    Mike looked across the table at the heavy man. He said, “They brought in missiles. Not U.S. manufacture, but all the same,
     we don’t want them caught with them.”
    “The Institute has no official knowledge of this,” Lowell added primly, “and certainly does not condone its members carrying
     out such activities.”
    “Just as you would not hire mercenaries to rescue them,” Mike suggested.
    “Exactly,” Lowell agreed without a trace of humor. “Mounting a clandestine rescue effort to free these fine young men is an
     entirely different approach.”
    “Suppose they can be located but not rescued.”
    “Then they will have to be terminated in such a way that their remains cannot be identified,” Lowell said in his stiff voice.
    Mike looked across the table at the heavy man to see if he would disagree, but the man looked away from him.
    Now Mike had the truth of the offer: Rescue them if possible; if not, scorch them into the dirt before the Russians can use
     fhem. It was not the three men who were to be saved as much as the reputation of the Nanticoke Institute.
    Mike sighed and played with his coffee cup. “A million dollars” he said.
    Campbell returned to Arizona that evening with the matter resolved in his mind. He would go to Afghanistan after he completed
     a prior commitment. His team would be ready in three weeks to a month. The professors hadn’t liked this at all. They couldn’t
     see why their problems weren’t more important than everybody else’s. All Mike would say was that he was committed to a mission
     but that he would do theirs back to back with it since the first mission would probably go easily. He wouldn’t tell them where
     or what it was, and he left the mansion and walled grounds of the Nanticoke Institute under a cloud of disapproval, which
     didn’t keep Mike awake that night back in Arizona with Tina.
    She was kind of surprised to see him show up so soon. He had left to make some phone calls and had been gone only a day and
     a half. Sometimes it was for six weeks. He went to a shopping center with her next morning and fixed things around the mobile
     home in the afternoon—always a sign that he was having the guilts. Tina wondered whether it was another woman or because he
     was leaving again soon and would be away for a while. She hated it when he was gone for a long time, but when he came home,
     it was almost worth it because he was loving and peaceable. It was when he was around and inactive for months on end that
     he became almost impossible to live with. So she took what came and hoped for the best.
    Tina picked up the phone