X Group

JSB #40 - X GROUP, is an action packed thriller starting off with recently forced to retire CIA agent Larry White seeing two men trying to abduct a small, 5'5" woman, named Joan Dodge. While she fights back with some degree of success, Larry goes to lend her a hand. Between them, they disarm the two men, and scare off the driver of the van the men had come out of. Larry soon finds out Joan has just been fired by Homeland Security, and in short order they discover they are both unemployed for uncovering damming information on the same member of the government.

Larry was also involved with X Group as well as being a CIA operative. While he was forced out at the CIA, he still is a highly thought of asset to X Group, and is assigned to investigate the situation with his dismissal and the firing of Joan, who he helped avoid being taken by the two men actively engaged in her capture. Shortly after they avoided her capture, she is offered the chance to join X Group, and eagerly accepts. It is agreed that Joan will work with Larry, and the two of them start off digging into the situation.

They capture one man involved, Joan's former boss at Homeland Security, and bleed him dry of information. To get his assistance, Larry had to shoot him in one knee, which in time caused him to be hospitalized...where he was murdered by his own people, to keep him from disclosing the identity of one of the top men in the organization. Along the way, Larry is nearly killed, saved with only seconds by a warning from Joan. She is to save his life again later on.

While those two are doing their thing, Jim Scott and Hector Garcia are dealing with the Los Angeles segment of the organization the X Group is attempting to eliminate. Their efforts include coming up with a plan to free a man innocent of a murder charge against him, one that sees him in jail without bond. No problem for those two, they just break him out of jail, and Jim takes him to his ranch in Montana.

With Jim and Hector starting to take down the evil outfit in Los Angeles, and the head of X Group doing the same in Washington, Larry and Joan are tracking down a high ranking member of Homeland Security who is on the run. He decided to do so because others who knew who the top man was had started dying, and he was afraid he might be next.

That man's disappearance along with the problems in Los Angeles and Washington convince the head man his days might be numbered if he stayed around, so he too goes on the run. Larry and Joan are assigned the task of finding him. While the other man they chased had a well-conceived and executed escape plan, this man relied on a man he had given a million dollars to plan for his own escape.

As it turns out, the man who made the deal to help the head man escape, is well known to those in X Group, including Larry who considers the man his mentor in the CIA. The thought that man is involved in the escape plan sickens Larry, until he figures out what the deal must be.