A small border town in Syria—well, the country was tiny to begin with, so whether it was near the border hardly mattered.
Eight men in bizarre camouflage lay beneath a ruined wall, their expressions perfectly matching the desolate surroundings. Every one of them looked as though his father had just died.
"Is this thing really worth that much?" A burly man with a deep groove in his face stared intently at his right hand, which held a small glass vial.
Inside the vial, a flea-sized Little Insect kept hopping around, showing no inclination to settle down despite the cramped space.
The burly man's eyes followed each hop of the Little Insect, blazing with greed.
A tall, thin man said, "Boss, there's no doubt about it! This is top-secret intelligence the Mysterious Buyer obtained from the Americans' Central Intelligence Agency through special channels. Think about it. If the information weren't real, would we have run into our American counterparts when we made our move?"
The burly man laughed freely, a trace of madness in his expression. "I know! I was just asking."
The tall, thin man said, "We're playing with fire this time! Those American jackals don't know we did it yet, but they already know we escaped to Syria. Because of this, the Americans have massed troops at the border. They might not actually attack, but they've made the situation around Syria suddenly tense, and the border controls are much tighter. Getting out of Syria safely will be even harder now."
His tone was rather subdued. Wealth was certainly tempting, but when a path almost certainly led to death, very few people dared take that step without fear.
Another man, a Black man with rough skin, said, "Geer, why do we have to leave Syria? We can just have the