The Lazarus Vendetta

Chapter Twenty-Four

As a multinational corporation worth nearly $50 billion, Nomura Pharma-Tech owned factories, laboratories, and warehouse facilities all around the world, but it still retained a substantial presence in Japan. The company's Tokyo-based complex occupied a forty-acre campus located in the very heart of the sprawling city's Shinjuku Ward. Three identical skyscrapers held administrative offices and science labs for Nomura's thousands of dedicated employees. At night, Tokyo's vivid, shimmering neon lights were reflected by each tower's mirrored facade — turning them into jeweled pillars on which the city's night sky rested. But the rest of the campus was a peaceful rural setting of forested parkland, flowing streams, and restful pools. During his tenure as CEO and chairman, Jinjiro Nomura, Hideo's father, had insisted on creating an oasis of natural beauty, peace, and tranquillity around his corporate headquarters — no matter how much it cost his company or its shareholders.

Three main gates controlled access to the walled compound. From each gate tree-lined paths and service roads fed pedestrian, auto, and truck traffic to one of the three towers.

Mitushara Noda had worked for Nomura PharmaTech for all of his adult life. Over the course of twenty-five years, the short, spare man with a passion for order and routine had risen steadily, if unspectacularly, from the post of junior nightshirt watchman to that of Gate Three security supervisor. The work was equally steady and equally unspectacular. Apart from making sure his guards checked employee badges, Noda's day consisted largely of making sure that shipments of food, office supplies, and lab chemicals arrived on time and were directed to the proper loading dock. Before beginning any shift, he always arrived early just so he could spend the time he needed to memorize the scheduled arrivals, departures, and loads for every vehicle slated to pass through his gate during the next eight hours.

That was why the unexpected sound of a heavy tractor-trailer truck shifting its gears noisily as it turned off the main road brought Mitsuhara Noda rushing out of his small office at the gatehouse. By his calculations, no shipments of any kind were due to arrive for at least another two hours and twenty-five minutes. The little man's black brows were furrowed as he watched the huge rig draw nearer, engine roaring as it steadily picked up speed.

Behind him, several of the other security guards whispered nervously to one another, wondering aloud what they should do. One unsnapped the holster at his side, readying his pistol for a quick draw.

Noda's eyes narrowed. The access road through Gate Three led directly to the tower dedicated to Nomura PharmaTech's nanotechnology research efforts. Several security circulars were posted in his office warning all company employees about the threats made by the Lazarus Movement. And there were no corporate markings on either the trailer or the cab of this fast-approaching truck.

He made a decision. “Lower the gate!” he snapped. “Hoshiko, phone the main office and report a possible security incident.”

Noda stepped right out into the road, signaling the driver of the oncoming truck to stop. Behind him, a solid steel pole swung down with a shrill electrical whine and locked in place. The other guards fumbled for their weapons.

But the truck kept coming. Its gears screamed as the big engine revved higher, accelerating to more than forty miles an hour. Unable for a moment to believe what he was seeing, the little gate supervisor stood his ground, still frantically waving his arms as he shouted for the big rig to halt.

Through the tinted windshield he caught a momentary glimpse of the man behind the wheel. There was no expression on the driver's face, no sign of recognition in his glassy, unseeing eyes. A kamikaze! Noda realized in horror.

Far too late, he turned to run.

The front end of the huge truck slammed into him with lethal force, shattering every bone in his upper body. Unable even to force a scream out of his ruptured lungs, he was hurled backward against the steel pole. The impact snapped his spine in half. Noda was already dead when the truck crashed straight through the gate amid the high-pitched shriek of rending metal.

Two of the shocked security guards reacted fast enough to open fire. But their pistol shots only ricocheted off the big rig's improvised armor plating and bulletproof windows. The truck kept going, roaring deeper into the wooded Nomura complex, racing straight for the tall mirrored lower containing the company's Tokyo nanotech research facility.

Scarcely one hundred yards from the skyscraper's main entrance, the speeding tractor-trailer crashed head-on into a row of massive steel-and-concrete barriers hurriedly deployed by the company after the terrorist attack on the Teller Institute. Huge pieces of broken concrete flew away from the point of impact, but the barriers held.

The big rig jackknifed and then exploded.

An enormous orange and red fireball roared high into the air. The

shock wave smashed windows all across the front of the lab complex. Knife-edge shards of glass cascaded onto the pavements and lawns far below. Bomb-mangled pieces of the truck and trailer were blown through a wide arc — tearing jagged holes in the steel fabric of the building and toppling trees in the surrounding groves.

The nanotech labs themselves, however, unoccupied and sealed under Japanese government supervision, were largely untouched. Casualties, aside from the suicide-bomb driver and the unfortunate Mitsuhara Noda, were remarkably low.

Thirty minutes later, an e-mail message issued by the Lazarus Movement arrived at the offices of every major Tokyo media outlet. In it, the Movement's Japan-based wing took credit for what it called “a mission of heroic self-sacrifice in defense of the planet and all humanity.”

Surveillance Team Safe House, on the Outskirts of Santa Fe

Two large panel vans were parked close to the front entrance of the secluded hilltop house. Their rear doors stood wide open, revealing an assortment of boxes and equipment cases crammed into the back of each vehicle. Five men were gathered near the vans, waiting for their leader.

The older, white-haired Dutchman named Linden was inside, going from room to room to make sure they were leaving nothing suspicious or incriminating behind. What he saw, or rather didn't see, pleased him. The safe house had been stripped and sanitized. Apart from a few tiny holes drilled in the walls, there were no longer any traces of the large array of cameras, radio and microwave receivers, computers, and communications gear they had installed to eavesdrop on every facet of the Teller investigation. Every smooth surface and piece of wood or metal furniture gleamed, scrubbed clean of all fingerprints and other traces of recent human habitation.

He came out of the house and stood blinking in the dazzling sunshine.

He crooked a finger at one of his men, beckoning him over. “Is everything packed, Abrantes?”

The younger man nodded. “We're ready.”

“Good, Vitor,” Linden said. The surveillance team leader checked his watch. “Then let's go. We have planes to catch.” He showed his tobacco-stained teeth in a quick, humorless smile. “Center's timetable for this new mission is very tight, but it will be good to leave this high and arid desert behind and return to Europe.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The Santa Fe Municipal Police Department had its headquarters on the Caiuino Entrada, out on the western edge of the city — not far from the county jail, and next to the city courthouse. Half an hour after first setting foot in the building, Jon Smith found himself sitting in the office of the ranking policeman on duty. Several photographs showing a pretty wife and three young children were hung on two of the plain white walls. A watercolor depicting one of the nearby pueblos took up part of another. Case files in manila folders were neatly organized on one corner of a plain desk, right next to a computer. A background buzz of ringing phones, conversations, and busy keyboards drifted in through an open door to the adjoining squad room.

Lieutenant Carl Zarate looked down at Smith's U.S. Army identity card and then back up with a puzzled frown. “Now what is it exactly that I'm supposed to do for you, Colonel?”

Smith kept his tone casual. He'd been bucked up to Zarate by a profusely sweating desk sergeant who had been made very uneasy by his questions. “I'm looking for some information, Lieutenant,” he said calmly. “A few facts about the gun battle somebody fought in the Plaza late last night.”

Zarate's narrow, bony face went blank. “What gun battle was that?” he asked carefully. His dark brown eyes were wary.

Smith cocked his head to one side. “You know,” he said, at last. “I was sort of surprised when the press didn't run wild with speculation about all the shooting going on right in the heart of the city. Then I thought that maybe someone leaned on the local papers and the TV and radio stations to keep the lid on — just for a while, just while an investigation was going on. With things so tense after the Teller disaster, that'd be natural, I guess. But I'd be very surprised to learn that you folks at the Santa Fe police department were playing the same game.”

The police officer eyed him for a moment longer. Then he shrugged. “If there were a gag order in effect, Colonel Smith, I'm damned if I know why I'd break the rules for you.”

“Maybe because these rules don't apply to me, Lieutenant Zarate?” Jon suggested easily. He handed the police officer the sheaf of investigative authorizations Fred Klein had arranged for him. He nodded toward them. “Those orders require me to observe and report on every aspect of the Teller investigation. Every aspect. And if you look at the last page there, you'll see the signature of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now, do you really want to get caught in a pissing match between the Pentagon and the FBI, especially since we're all supposed to be on the same side in this mess?”

Zarate flipped rapidly through the papers, with his frown growing even deeper. He slid them back across the desk with a snort of disgust. “There are times, Colonel, when I damned well wish the federal government would keep its big, fumbling paws out of my jurisdiction.”

Smith nodded sympathetically. "There are people in D.C. with all the grace and tact of a five-hundred-pound gorilla and the common sense of your average two-year-old."

Zarate grinned suddenly. “Strong words, Colonel. Maybe you'd better watch your mouth around the red-tape boys and girls. I hear they don't much care for soldiers who won't toe the line.”

“I'm a doctor and scientist first and foremost and an Army officer second,” Smith said. He shrugged. “I doubt I'm on anybody's short list to make general.”

“Uh-huh,” the police lieutenant said skeptically. “That's why you're running around with personal orders signed by the head of the JCS.” He spread his hands. “Unfortunately, there's really not much I can tell you. Yeah, there was some kind of shoot-out in the Plaza last night. One guy got himself killed. There may have been others who were hit. We were still checking blood trails when my forensics team was called off.”

Smith pounced on that. “Your team was called off?”

“Yeah,” Zarate said flatly. “The FBI swooped in and took over. Said it was a matter of national security and that it fell within their jurisdiction.”

“When was that?” Jon asked.

“Maybe an hour after we first arrived on the scene,” the police officer told him. “But they didn't just kick us off the ground, they also confiscated every spent shell casing, every piece of paperwork, and every crime scene photo. They even took the tapes of dispatcher calls to and from units responding to the scene!”

Smith whistled softly in surprise. This was more than a simple dispute over jurisdiction. The FBI had made a clean sweep of every scrap of official evidence. “On whose authority?” he asked quietly.

“Deputy Assistant Director Katherine Pierson signed the orders,” Zarate answered. His mouth tightened. “I won't pretend I'm happy about tucking my tail in and complying, but nobody in the mayor's office or on the city council wants to rock the boat with the Feds right now.”

Jon nodded his understanding. With a major disaster right on its doorstep, Santa Fe would be depending heavily on federal aid money and assistance. And local pride and turf consciousness would naturally take a backseat to urgent necessity.

“Just one more question,” he promised Zarate. “You said there was a corpse. Do you know what happened to the body? Or who's handling the autopsy?”

The police lieutenant shook his head in confusion. “That's where this whole screwy situation gets very weird.” He scowled. “I made a few phone calls to the various coroners and hospitals, just checking around for my own edification. And as far as I can tell nobody did anything at all to try to identify the stiff. Instead, it looks like the FBI slid the dead guy right into an ambulance and shipped him off to a mortuary way down in Albuquerque for immediate cremation.” He looked straight at Smith. “Now what the hell do you make of that, Colonel?”

Jon fought for control over his face and won, maintaining a stony, impassive expression. Exactly what was Kit Pierson doing out here in Santa Fe? he wondered. Who was she covering up for?

It was a little before noon when Smith left the Santa Fe police department and walked out onto the Camino Entrada. His eyes flickered briefly to the left and right, checking the street in both directions, but otherwise he revealed no great interest in his surroundings. Instead, still apparently deep in thought, he climbed into his rented dark gray Mustang coupe and drove away. A few quick turns on surface streets led him into the crowded parking lot surrounding the city's indoor shopping center, the Villa Linda Mall. Once there, he threaded through several rows of parked cars, acting as though he was simply looking for an open space. Finally, he drove away from the mall, crossed the encircling Wagon Road, and parked under the shade of some trees growing next to a shallow ravine marked on his map as the Arroyo de las Chamisos.

Two minutes later, another car, this one a white four-door Buick, turned in right behind him. Peter Howell got out and stretched while carefully checking the environment. Satisfied that they were unobserved, he sauntered up, pulled open the Mustang's passenger-side door, and then slid into the bucket seat next to Smith.

In the hours since they had met for breakfast, the Englishman had found time to have his hair cut fashionably short. He had also changed his clothes, abandoning the faded denims and heavy flannel shirt he had worn as Malachi MacNamara in favor of a pair of khaki slacks, a solid blue button-down shirt, and a herringbone sports coat. The fiery Lazarus Movement fanatic was gone, replaced by a lean, sun-browned British expatriate apparently out for an afternoon's shopping.

“Spot anything?” Jon asked him.

Peter shook his head. “Not so much as a suspiciously turned head. You're clean.”

Smith relaxed slightly. The other man had been operating as his distant cover, hanging back while he went into the police headquarters and then keeping an eye on his tail to spot anyone following him when he came out.

“Were you able to learn anything yourself?” Peter asked. “Or did your pointed questions fall on stony ground?”

“Oh, I learned a fair amount,” Jon said grimly. “Maybe even more than I bargained for.”

Peter raised an inquiring eyebrow but otherwise stayed quiet, listening carefully while Smith filled him in on what he had learned. When he heard that Dolan's body had been cremated, he shook his head, sourly amused. “Well, well, well… ashes to ashes and dust to dust. And no fingerprints or inconvenient dental impressions left for anyone to match up with any embarrassing personnel files. I suppose no matter how thoroughly the CIA and FBI databases were scrubbed, somebody, somewhere, would have been bound to recognize the fellow.”

“Yep.” Jon's fingers drummed on the steering wheel of his car. “Nifty, isn't it?”

“It does raise a number of intriguing questions,” Peter agreed. He ticked them off on his own fingers. “Who are these secret operations lads like the late and unlamented Michael Dolan really working for? The Lazarus Movement, as they seem to be on the surface? Or some other organization, sub rosa? Perhaps even your very own CIA? All very confusing, wouldn't you say?”

“One thing's certain,” Smith told him. “Kit Pierson must be in this mess up to her neck. She probably has the authority to take over the Plaza crime scene. But there's no way she can justify cremating Dolan's body, not under standard FBI practice and procedure.”

“Could she be doubling for Lazarus?” Peter asked quietly. “Working to sabotage the FBI's investigation from within?”

“Kit Pierson as a Lazarus mole?” Jon shook his head firmly. “I can't see it. If anything, she's been pushing far too hard to blame everything that happened at the Institute on the Movement.”

Peter nodded. “True. So if she's not working for Lazarus, she must be working against them — which suggests she's covering for an off-the-books anti-Movement operation run by the FBI, or the CIA, or both.”

Smith looked at him. “You think they're really running an operation that sensitive without the president's approval?”

Peter shrugged. “It happens, Jon, as you well know.” He smiled drilv. “Remember poor old Henry the Second? He gets a bit pissed one night and roars out, 'Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?' Then, practically before he can sober up, there's blood spilled all over the floor of Canterbury Cathedral. Thomas Becket's suddenly a sainted martyr. And the sad, sorry, hung-over king is down for a round of scourging, hair shirts, and public penitence.”

Smith nodded slowly. “Yeah, I know. Intelligence outfits sometimes exceed their authority. But it's a damned dangerous game to be playing.”

“Of course it is,” Peter said. “Careers can be wrecked. And even high-ranking officials can be sent to prison. That's precisely why they might have decided to kill you.”

Jon frowned. "I can understand a CIA/FBI covert operation designed to wreck the Lazarus Movement from within. It would be stupid and completely illegal, but I can understand it. And I can see a Movement attempt to sabotage the Institute labs. But what I can't make fit into either scenario is the nanophage release that slaughtered all those protesters."

“Yes,” Peter said slowly, with his eyes full of remembered horror. “That is the one piece which remains stubbornly outside the puzzle. And a bloody awful piece it is, too.”

Nodding, Smith sat back from the steering wheel and pulled out his phone. “Maybe it's time we stopped pissing around on the outside.” He punched in a number. It was answered on the first ring. “This is Colonel Jonathan Smith, Agent Latimer,” he said sharply. “I want to speak to Deputy Assistant Director Pierson. Right now.”

“Bearding the lioness in her den?” Peter murmured. “Not very subtle even for you, is it, Jon?”

Smith grinned at him over the phone. “I'll leave subtlety to you Brits, Peter. Sometimes you've just got to fix bayonets and launch a good old-fashioned frontal assault.” Then, as he listened to the voice on the other end, his grin slowly faded. “I see,” he said quietly. “And when was that?”

He hung up.

“Trouble?” Peter asked.

“Maybe.” Smith frowned. “Kit Pierson is already on her way back to Washington for certain urgent and unspecified consultations. She's catching an executive jet out of Albuquerque a little later this afternoon.”

“So the bird is on the wing, eh? Interesting timing, isn't it?” Peter said with a sudden gleam in his eye. “I begin to suspect that Ms. Pierson just received a rather disturbing call from the local police.”

“You're probably right,” Smith agreed, remembering the nervous looks he had gotten from the policeman who had passed him up the chain to Zarate. The desk sergeant must have tipped off the FBI that an Army lieutenant colonel named Jonathan Smith was digging into an incident the Bureau was trying to bury. He glanced at the Englishman. "Are you up for a quick trip to D.C.? I know it's outside your current area of operations, but I could sure use some help. Kit Pierson is the one solid lead I've got and I don't plan to just watch her walk away."

“Count me in,” Peter replied with a slow, predatory grin. “I wouldn't miss this for the world.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“I understand you very well, Mr. Speaker,” President Samuel Adam Castilla growled into the phone. He looked up and saw Charles Ouray, his chief of staff, poke his head into the Oval Office. Castilla motioned him inside with a wave and then turned back to the phone. “Now it's time for you to understand me. I will not be stampeded into any executive action I think unwise. Not by the CIA or the FBI. Not by the Senate. And not by you. Is that clear? Very well, then. Good day to you, sir.”

Castilla hung up, resisting the urge to slam the phone down in its cradle. He rubbed a big hand over his weary face. “They say Andrew Jackson once threatened to horsewhip a fellow off the White House grounds. I used to think that was just Old Hickory on a wild-eyed tear, letting his famous temper get the better of him. But now I'm mighty tempted to follow his example.”

“Are you receiving more helpful advice from Congress?” Ouray asked drily, nodding toward the phone.

The president grimaced. “That was the Speaker of the House,” he said. “Graciously suggesting that I immediately sign an executive order naming the Lazarus Movement a terrorist organization.”

“Or?”

“Or the House and Senate will enact legislation on their own initiative,” Castilla finished.

Ouray raised an eyebrow. “By a veto-proof majority?”

The president shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, we lose. Politically. Diplomatically. You name it.”

His chief of staff nodded soberly. “I guess it doesn't matter much whether an anti-Lazarus bill ever really becomes law. If it passes the Congress, our increasingly shaky international alliances will take another serious hit.”

“Too true, Charlie,” Castilla said, sighing. “Most people around the world will see a law like that as more proof that we're overreacting, turning paranoid and panicked. Oh, I suppose a few of our friends, the ones worried by those bombs in Chicago and Tokyo, might cheer quietly, but most folks will only think we're making matters worse. That we're pushing an otherwise peaceful group toward violence — or that we're covering up our own crimes.”

“It's a terrible situation,” Ouray agreed.

“Yes, it is.” Castilla sighed. “And it's about to get much worse.” Feeling trapped behind his desk, he stood up and crossed over to the windows. For a short time he stared out across the South Lawn, noting the squads of heavily armed guards in helmets and body armor now patrolling openly around the grounds. After the Lazarus Movement attack in Tokyo, the Secret Service had insisted on tightening security around the White House.

He looked back over his shoulder at Ouray. “Before the Speaker dropped his little legislative ultimatum on me, I had another call — this one from Ambassador Nichols at the UN.”

The White House chief of staff frowned. “Is something up inside the Security Council?”

Castilla nodded. “Nichols just got wind of a resolution some of the nonaligned countries on the Council are going to propose. Basically, they're going to demand that we open all of our nanotech research facilities — both public and private — to full international inspection, including an examination of all their proprietary processes. They say it's the only way they can be sure that we're not running a secret nanotech weapons program. And Nichols says he thinks the nonaligned bloc has enough Council votes lined up for passage.”

Ouray grimaced. “We can't allow that to go through.”

“No, we can't,” Castilla agreed heavily. “It's basically a license to steal every nanotech development we've made. Our companies and universities have spent billions on this research. I can't let all of that work go down the drain.”

“Can we persuade one of the other permanent members to veto this resolution for us?” Ouray asked.

Castilla shrugged. “Nichols says Russia and China are ready to stick it to us. They want to know how far we've gone in nanoteclmology. We'll be lucky if the French decide to abstain. That leaves just the British. And I'm not sure how far the prime minister can go right now to give us political cover. His control over Parliament is tenuous at best.”

“Then we'll have to veto it ourselves,” Ouray realized. His jaw tightened. “And that will look bad. Really bad.”

Castilla nodded grimly. “I can't imagine anything more likely to confirm the world's worst fears about what we're doing. If we veto a Security Council resolution on nanotech, we'll immediately lend credibility to the Lazarus Movement's most outrageous claims.”

Still driving his rented Mustang, Smith pulled away from the Truman Gate guardhouse and headed south through the sprawling air base, passing Little League baseball fields crowded with teams and cheering parents on the right. It was near the end of the season, and the local championships were in full swing.

Following the directions the Air Force security police had given him, he made his way through the maze of streets and buildings and arrived at a small parking lot near the flight line. Peter Howell's white Buick LeSabre pulled in next to him.

Smith climbed out of the Mustang and slung his laptop and a small travel bag over one shoulder. He tossed the keys onto the front seat and left the door unlocked. He saw Peter following his example. After they were gone, one of Fred Klein's occasional couriers would arrange for the safe return of the two rental cars.

Commercial passenger aircraft in bright colors thundered low overhead, taking off and landing at precisely regulated intervals. Kirtland shared its runways with Albuquerque's international airport. Heat waves shimmered out on the concrete, and the sharp tang of jet fuel hung in the hot air.

A large C-17 Globemaster transport in pale gray U.S. Air Force camouflage sat on the tarmac with its engines already spooling over. Jon and Peter walked toward the waiting jet.

The loadmaster, a senior Air Force noncom with a square, hard face and permanently furrowed brows, came to meet them. “Is one of you guys Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith?” he asked after looking down at the clipboard in his hand to make sure he got the name and rank right.

“That's me, Sergeant,” Jon told him. “And this is Mr. Howell.”

“Then if you'll both follow me, sir,” the loadmaster said, after a long, dubious look at Smith's civilian clothes. “We've only got a five-minute window for takeoff, and Major Harris says he ain't disposed to lose his spot and wind up sitting in line behind a goddamned bunch of airborne buses full of tourists.”

Smith hid a rueful grin. He strongly suspected the C-17 pilot had said considerably more than that on hearing that he was making an unscheduled cross-country flight — solely to ferry one Army light colonel and a foreign-born civilian to the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Once again, Fred Klein had waved Covert-One's magic wand, this time working through contacts inside the Pentagon's bureaucracy. He and Peter followed the C-17 crewman into the aircraft's cavernous cargo bay and then up onto the flight deck.

The pilot and co-pilot were waiting for them in the cockpit, already running through their last preflight checklist. Both had active heads-up displays, HUDs, fixed in front of them. On the control console below the windshield four large multi-function computer displays flashed through a variety of modes, showing the status of the engines, hydraulics, avionics, and other controls.

Major Harris, the pilot, turned his head when they came in. “Are you gentlemen ready to go?” he asked through gritted teeth, emphasizing the word “gentlemen” to make plain that was not the word he would have preferred to use.

Smith nodded apologetically. “We're set, Major,” he said. “And I'm sorry about the short notice. If it's any consolation, this is a genuinely critical mission — not just a glorified VIP jaunt.”

Slightly mollified, Harris jerked a thumb at the two observer seats right behind him. “Well, strap yourselves in.” He leaned across to his co-pilot. “Let's get this crate moving, Sam. We're on the clock now.”

The two Air Force officers busied themselves with the controls and brought the big plane rumbling out onto the apron, taxiing slowlv toward the main runway. The roar of the C-17's four turbofan engines grew even louder as Harris pushed the throttles forward with his left hand.

After Jon and Peter buckled themselves in, the loadmaster handed them each a helmet with a built-in radio headset. “Air-to-ground transmissions are pretty much it as far as in-flight entertainment goes,” he told them, raising his voice over the howl of the engines.

“What? You mean there are no stewardesses, champagne, or caviar?” Peter asked with a horrified look.

Almost against his will, the C-17 crewman grinned back. “No, sir. Just me and my coffee, I'm afraid.”

“Fresh-brewed, I trust?” the Englishman asked.

“Nope. Instant decaf,” the Air Force sergeant replied, smiling even more broadly. He vanished, heading for his own seat down in the aircraft's cavernous cargo bay.

“Good lord! The sacrifices I make for queen and country,” Peter murmured with a quick wink at Smith.

The jet swung through a sharp turn, lining up with the long main runway. Ahead, a Southwest Airlines 737 lifted off and banked north. “Air Force Charlie One-Seven, you are cleared for immediate takeoff,” the tower air traffic controller's voice crackled suddenly through Smith's radio earphones.

“Roger, Tower,” Harris replied. “Charlie One-Seven is rolling now.” He shoved the four engine throttles all the way forward.

The C-17 accelerated down the runway, gaining speed fast. Jon felt himself pressed back against the padding of his seat. Less than a minute later, they were airborne, climbing steeply over the patchwork of houses, freeways, and parks of Albuquerque.

They were flying at thirty-seven thousand feet somewhere over West Texas when the co-pilot leaned back and tapped Smith on the knee. “There's a secure transmission for you, Colonel,” he said. “I'll switch it to your headset.”

Smith nodded his thanks.

“I have a situation update, Colonel,” Fred Klein's familiar voice said. “Your target is also aloft and heading east for Andrews Air Force Base. She's approximately four hundred miles ahead of your aircraft now.”

Jon worked that out in his head. The C-17 had a cruise speed of roughly five hundred knots, which meant Kit Pierson's FBI executive jet would touch down at Andrews at least forty-five minutes before he and Peter could hope to arrive there. He frowned. “Any chance of delaying her? Maybe have the FAA put her plane in a parking orbit until we can get down?”

“Alas, no,” Klein said crisply. “Not without tipping our hand entirely. Arranging this flight was tricky enough.”

“Damn it.”

“The situation may not be as dire as you think,” Klein told him. “She has a confirmed meeting at the Hoover Building first and there's an official car standing by to take her straight there. Whatever else she plans isn't likely to take place until later, which should give you time to pick up her trail in D.C.”

Smith thought about that. The head of Covert-One was probably right, he decided. Although he was pretty sure that Kit Pierson's real purpose in returning to Washington went far beyond simply delivering a personal high-level briefing for her Bureau superiors, she was going to have to play the game as though it were.

“What about the vehicles and gear I requested?” he asked.

“They'll be waiting for you,” Klein promised. His voice sharpened. “But I still have some very serious misgivings about involving Howell so closely with this operation, Colonel. He's a bright fellow… maybe too bright, and his fundamental loyalties lie outside this country.”

Smith glanced at Peter. The Englishman was staring out the cockpit side windows, seemingly wrapped up in watching the vast panorama of drifting cloud masses and seemingly endless flat brown countryside over which they were flying. “You'll have to trust me on this one,” he told Klein softly. “Back when you signed me on to this show, you told me you needed mavericks, self-starters who didn't quite fit into everybody else's neat little tables of organization. People who were willing to buck the system for results, remember?”

“I remember,” Klein said. “And I meant it.”

“Well, I'm bucking the system right now,” Smith said firmly. "Peter is already basically focused on the same problem we are. Plus, he's got skills and instincts and brainpower we can use to our advantage."

There was silence on the other end for several seconds while Klein digested that. “Cogently argued, Colonel,” he said at last. “All right, cooperate with Howell as closely as you can, but remember: He must never learn about Covert-One. Never. Is that understood?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die, Chief,” Smith answered.

Klein snorted. “Fair enough, Jon.” He cleared his throat. “Let me know once you're on the ground, all right?”

“Will do,” Smith replied. He leaned forward to check the navigation display, which showed their position, distance from Andrews, and current airspeed. “It looks like that should be sometime around nine P.M., your time.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The grim, soulless high-rise housing projects of the Parisian slums, the cites, rose black against the night. Their design — massive, oppressively ugly, and intentionally sterile — was a monument to the grotesque ideals of the Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who thought solely in cold, utilitarian terms. The projects were also a testament to the penny-pinching of French bureaucrats — who wanted only to cram as many of their nation's unwanted immigrants, most of them Muslims, into the smallest possible spaces.

Few lights shone around the graffiti-smeared concrete bulk of the Cite des Quatre Mille, the “city of four thousand,” a notorious haven for thieves, thugs, drug dealers, and Islamic radicals. The honest poor were trapped in a de facto prison essentially run by the criminals and terrorists among them. Most of the street lamps were either burned out or broken. The charred wrecks of stripped cars littered the potholed streets. The few stores in the neighborhood were either barricaded behind steel bars or else reduced to looted, blackened rubble.

Ahmed ben-Belbouk drifted through the night, a shadow among other shadows. He wore a long black raincoat against the night air and a kufi cap to cover his head. He was a little less than six feet tall, and he cultivated a full beard that masked some of the acne scars that pockmarked his round, soft face. By birth French, by heritage Algerian, and by faith a follower of radical Islam, ben-Belbouk was a recruiter for the jihad against America and the decadent West. He operated out of a backroom office in one of the local mosques, quietly and carefully screening those who heeded the call to holy war. Those he judged the most promising were given false passports, cash, and plane tickets and sent outside France for advanced training.

Now, after a long day, he was at last returning to the bleak, grimy welfare apartment graciously provided for him by the state. Counting the secret funds at his disposal, he had money enough to live someplace better, but ben-Belbouk believed it was better to live among those whose loyalty he sought. When they saw him sharing their hardships and their hopelessness, they were more willing to listen to his sermons of hatred and his calls for vengeance on their Western oppressors.

Suddenly the terrorist recruiter noticed movement along the darkened avenue ahead. He stopped. That was odd. These were the hours when the streets of this district were usually deserted. The timid and honest were already cowering at home behind their locked doors, and the criminals and drug dealers were usually either still asleep or too busy indulging their vicious habits to be out and about.

Ben-Belbouk slipped into the darkened door of a burnt-out bakery and stood watching. He slipped his right hand into the pocket of his raincoat and felt the butt of the pistol he carried, a compact Glock 19. The street gangs and other petty criminals who preyed on the residents of the Cite usually steered a wide berth around men like him, but he preferred the option of providing for his own security.

From his place of concealment he watched the activity with growing suspicion. There was a van parked near the base of one of the smashed street lamps. Two men in coveralls were outside the vehicle, holding a ladder for a third technician working on something up near the top of the dark metal pole. Was this supposed to be a crew from the state-run electricity company? Sent here on some quixotic mission to again repair the streetlights already destroyed ten times over by the local residents?

The bearded man's eyes narrowed, and he spat silently to one side. The very thought was ridiculous. Representatives of the French government were despised in this district. Policemen were mobbed on sight. BAISE LA POLICE, “screw the police,” was the single most popular graffiti. The coarse, obscene phrase was spray-painted on every building in sight. Even the firemen sent in to put out the frequent arson blazes were greeted with barrages of Molotov cocktails and rocks. They had to be escorted by armored cars. Surely no electrician in his right mind would dare to set foot in La Courneuve? Not after dark — and certainly not without a detachment of heavily armed riot police to guard him.

So who were these men, and what were they really doing? Ben-Belbouk looked more carefully. The technician on the ladder seemed to be installing a piece of equipment — a small gray rectangular plastic box of some kind.

He ran his gaze along the other street lamps in sight. To his surprise, he noticed identical gray boxes mounted on several of them at precise, regular intervals. Though it was difficult to be sure in the dim light, he thought he could make out dark round openings on the boxes. Were those camera lenses? His suspicions hardened into certainty. These cochons, these pigs, were setting up something — a new surveillance system, perhaps — that would tighten the government's grip on this lawless zone. He could not allow that to pass without resistance.

For a moment he debated whether or not to slip away and rouse the local Islamic brotherhoods. Then he thought better of it. In the inevitable delay these spies could easily finish their work and vanish. Besides, they were unarmed. It would be safer and more satisfying to handle them himself.

Ben-Belbouk drew the small Glock pistol out of his coat pocket and moved out into the open, holding the weapon unobtrusively at his side. He stopped a few paces away from the trio of technicians. “You there!” he called out. “What are you doing here?”

Startled, the two holding the ladder turned toward him. The third man, busy tightening screws on the clamps holding the box to the utility pole, kept working.

“I said, what are you doing here?” ben-Belbouk demanded again, louder this time.

One of the pair at the ladder shrugged. “Our work is none of your business, m'sieur,” he said dismissively. “Go on your way and leave us in peace.”

The bearded Islamic extremist saw red. His thin lips turned downward in a fierce scowl, and he brought the Glock out into plain sight. “This,” he snarled, jabbing the pistol at them, “makes it my business.” He moved closer. “Now answer my question, filth, before I lose my patience!”

He never heard the silenced shot that killed him.

The 7.62mm rifle round hit Ahmed ben-Belbouk behind the right ear, tore through his brain, and blew a large hole in the left side of his skull. Pieces of pulverized bone and brain matter sprayed across the pavement. The terrorist recruiter fell in a heap, already dead.

Secure in the concealing shadows of a trash-strewn alley some distance away, the tall, broad-shouldered man who called himself Nones tapped his sniper lightly on the shoulder. “That was a decent shot.”

The other man lowered his Heckler & Koch PSG-1 rifle and smiled gratefully. Words of praise from any of the Horatii were rare.

Nones keyed his radio mike, speaking to the pair of observers he had posted on nearby rooftops to watch over his technicians. “Any further sign of movement?”

“Negative,” they both replied. “Everything is quiet.”

The green-eyed man nodded to himself. The incident was unfortunate but evidently not a serious threat to his operational security. Murders and disappearances were relatively common occurrences in this part of La Courneuve. One more meant little or nothing. He switched to the technicians' frequency. “How much longer?” he demanded.

“We're almost finished,” their leader reported. “Two more minutes.” “Good.” Nones turned back to the sniper. “Stay ready. Shiro and I will dispose of the body.” Then he looked back at the much shorter man crouching behind him. “Come with me.”

About one hundred meters from the place where Ahmed ben-Belbouk now lay dead, a slender woman stayed prone, hidden beneath the stripped and burnt-out chassis of a little Renault sedan. She was dressed from head to foot in black, with a black cotton jumpsuit for her torso, arms, and legs, black gloves, black boots, and a black watch cap to conceal her golden hair. She stared at the image in her night-vision binoculars. “Son of a bitch!” she swore under her breath. Then she spoke softly into her own radio. “Did you see that, Max?”

“Oh, I saw it,” confirmed her subordinate, posted farther back in the shelter of a small copse of dead trees. “I'm not sure I believe it, but I definitely saw it.”

CIA officer Randi Russell focused her binoculars on the three men grouped around the street lamp. She watched silently while two more men — one very tall, with auburn hair, the other an Asian — crossed the street and joined the others. Working swiftly, the two newcomers rolled ben-Belbouk's corpse up in a black plastic sheet and lugged it away.

Randi gritted her teeth. With the dead man went the fruits of several months of hard, concentrated research, complicated planning, and risky covert surveillance. That was how long her section of the CIA's Paris Station had been tasked with tracking the recruitment of would-be Islamic terrorists in France. Zeroing in on ben-Belbouk had been like finding the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. By monitoring his contacts they were beginning to build comprehensive files on a host of very nasty characters, just the sorts of sick bastards who would get a thrill out of murdering thousands of innocents.

And now her whole operation was wiped out — well and truly wrecked by a single silenced shot.

She rubbed at her perfectly straight nose with one gloved finger, furiously thinking. “Who the hell are those guys?” she muttered.

“Maybe DGSE? Or GIGN?” Max speculated aloud, naming both the French foreign intelligence service and the country's counterterrorist specialists.

Randi nodded to herself. That was possible. The French intelligence services and counterterror units were known for playing rough — very rough. Had she just witnessed a piece of government-sanctioned “wet work” designed to rid France of a security threat without the inconvenience and expense of an arrest and a public trial?

Maybe, she thought coldly. If so, though, it was a remarkably stupid thing to do. While alive, Ahmed ben-Belbouk had been a window straight into the deadly underground world of Islamic terrorism — a world that was almost impossible for U.S. and other intelligence services to penetrate. Dead, he was useless to everybody.

“They're pulling out, boss,” Max's voice said in her ear.

Randi watched closely while the three men in overalls folded their ladder, shoved it into the back of their van, and drove away. Moments later, two cars, a dark blue BMW and a smaller Ford Escort, pulled onto the darkened avenue and followed the van. “Did you jot down the license plates on those vehicles?” she asked.

“Yeah, I got 'em,” Max replied. “They were all local numbers.”

“Good, we'll run them through the computer once we're finished here. Maybe that'll give us some idea of which jackasses just kicked us in the teeth,” she said grimly.

Randi lay motionless for a while longer, now focusing her binoculars on the small gray boxes fixed to a number of lampposts up and down the avenue and on the nearby side streets. The more she studied the boxes, the odder they seemed. They looked very much like containers for a variety of sensors, she decided — complete with several apertures for cameras, intakes for air sampling devices, and short, stubby data relay antennae on top.

Weird, she thought. Very weird. Why would anyone waste money setting up a whole network of expensive scientific instruments in a crime-ridden slum like La Courneuve? The boxes were reasonably unobtrusive, but they weren't invisible. Once the locals noticed them, their life span and that of the equipment they contained would be measured in minutes at most. So why kill ben-Belbouk just because he was starting to raise a fuss? She shook her head in frustration. Without more of the pieces to this puzzle, nothing she had seen tonight made much sense.

“You know, Max, I think we ought to take a closer look at what those guys were installing,” she told her subordinate. “But we're going to have to come back with a ladder to do it.”

“Not tonight, we're not,” the other man warned. “The crazies, druggies, and jihad boys are due out on the streets any minute now, boss lady. We need to git while the gittin' is good.”

“Yeah,” Randi agreed. She tucked her binoculars away and slithered gracefully backward out from under the charred Renault. Her mind was still working fast. The more she thought about it, the less likely it seemed that killing ben-Belbouk had been the primary aim of the men installing those strange sensor arrays. Maybe his murder was just a piece of unintended collateral damage. Then who were they, she wondered, and what were they really up to?

Chapter Twenty-Eight

FBI Deputy Assistant Director Kit Pierson saw the weathered signpost caught in the high beams of her green Volkswagen Passat. HARDSCRABBLE HOLLOW— [A MILE. That was her next landmark. She tapped the brakes, slowing down. She did not want to risk missing the turnoff to Hal Burke's run-down farm.

The rolling Virginia countryside was covered in almost total darkness. Only the quarter moon cast a faint glow through the solid layer of clouds high overhead. There were a few other farms and homes scattered through these low wooded hills, but it was already past midnight and their inhabitants were long since asleep. With chores and early morning Sunday church services awaiting them, most people in this part of the state went to bed early.

The rutted gravel drive to her CIA counterpart's weekend retreat appeared just ahead, and she slowed further. Before turning onto it, though, she glanced again in the rearview mirror. Nothing. There were no other headlights in sight along this desolate stretch of county road. She was still alone.

Partly reassured by that, Pierson turned her Passat onto the track and followed it uphill to the house. The lights were on, spilling out onto the weed-and bramble-choked hillside through partly drawn curtains. Burke was expecting her.

She parked next to his car, an old Mercury Marquis, and walked quickly to the front door. It opened before she could even knock. The stocky, square-jawed CIA officer stood there in his shirtsleeves. He looked weary and rumpled, with shadowed, bloodshot eyes.

Burke took one suspicious look around, making sure that she was by herself, and then stepped back to let her come into the narrow front hall. “Did you have any trouble?” he asked harshly.

Kit Pierson waited for him to close the door before replying. “On my way here? No,” she said coolly. “At my meeting with the director and his senior staff? Yes.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“They weren't especially pleased to see me in D.C. instead of still out in the field,” she said flatly. “In fact, there were several rather pointed suggestions that my preliminary report was entirely too 'thin' to justify coming back in person.”

The CIA officer shrugged. “That was your call, Kit,” he reminded her. “We didn't need to meet here in person. We could have worked through this problem on the phone if you'd just sat tight.”

“With Smith starting to breathe right down my neck?” she snapped back. “Not likely, Hal.” She shook her head. “I don't know how much he knows yet, but he's getting too close. Shutting down the Santa Fe police probe was a mistake. We should have just let the local cops go ahead and try to identify your man's body.”

Burke shook his head. “Too risky.”

“Our files were scrubbed,” Pierson said stubbornly. "There's no way this Dolan character could have been linked to either of us. Or even to the Agency or the Bureau as a whole."

“Still too risky,” he told her. “Other agencies have their own databases — databases over which we have no control. The Army has its own files, for that matter. Hell, Kit, you're the one who's so panicked about Smith and his mysterious employers! You know as well as I do that anyone pegging Dolan as an ex-Special Forces officer would be bound to start asking some goddamned tough questions.”

Burke showed her into his study. The small dark-paneled room was crowded with a desk, a monitor and keyboard, two chairs, several bookcases, a television, and racks full of computer and communications equipment. An open half-empty bottle of Jim Beam whiskey and a shot glass sat on the desk, right next to the computer keyboard. A faint stale whiff of sweat, unwashed dishes, mildew, and general neglect hung in the air.

Pierson wrinkled her nose in distaste. The man was disintegrating under the pressure as TOCSIN collapsed around them, she thought coldly.

“Want a drink?” Burke growled, dropping heavily into the swivel chair in front of his desk. He waved her into the other chair, a battered armchair with lumpy, fraying upholstery.

She shook her head and then sat watching while he poured one for himself. The whiskey sloshed over the rim and left a wet ring on his desk. He ignored the spill, instead downing his drink in one swift gulp. He set the glass down with a thump and looked up at her. “Okay, Kit, why exactly are you here?”

“To persuade you to shut TOCSIN down,” she said without hesitating.

One corner of the CIA officer's mouth turned down in an irritated frown. “We've gone through this before. My answer is still the same.”

“But the situation is not the same, Hal!” Pierson said forcefully. Her lips thinned. "And you know it. The Teller attack was supposed to force President Castilla to act against the Lazarus Movement before it was too late — to act as a relatively bloodless wake-up call. It wasn't supposed to make Lazarus stronger. And it certainly wasn't supposed to trigger a worldwide spree of bombings and murders we can't stop!"

“Wars always have unintended consequences,” Burke said through clenched teeth. “And we are in a war against the Movement. Maybe you've forgotten what's at stake in this matter.”

She shook her head. “I haven't forgotten anything. But TOCSIN is only a means to an end — not the end itself. The whole damned operation is unraveling faster than you can stitch it back together. So I say we cut our losses while we still can. Call off your action teams now. Tell them to abort any ongoing missions and drop back into cover. Then, once that's done, we can plan our next move.”

To buy himself some time before replying, Burke picked up the whiskey bottle and poured another drink. But this time he left the glass untouched. He looked closely at her. “You can't run from this one, Kit. It's gone too far for that. Even if we shut TOCSIN down right now and pull in our horns, your little friend Dr. Jonathan Smith is still going to be out there asking questions we do not want answered.”

“I know that,” she said bitterly. “Trying to kill Smith was a mistake. Failing to kill him was a disaster.”

“What's done is done,” Burke said, shrugging both shoulders. “One of my security units is hunting the colonel. Once they pinpoint him, they'll nail him.”

Pierson looked at him in exasperation. “Which means you have absolutely no idea where he is right now.”

“He's gone to ground again,” Burke admitted. “I sent people to the Santa Fe PD after you called to let me know Smith was snooping there, but he disappeared before they arrived.”

“Wonderful.”

“The nosy bastard can't run far, Kit,” the CIA officer said confidently. "I have agents watching the airport terminals in both Santa Fe and Albuquerque. And I have a contact in Homeland Security running his name through every commercial flight manifest. The moment he surfaces, we'll know it. And when he does, our guys will close in.“ He smiled thinly. ”Trust me on this, okay? For all practical purposes, Smith is nothing but a dead man walking."

Along the county road below, the drivers of the two dark-colored automobiles traveling slowly without any headlights turned off their ignitions and coasted to a stop, pulling off to the side not far from the gravel track heading uphill. Still wearing the U.S. Army-issue AN/PVS 7 night-vision goggles he'd been using to drive without lights, Jon Smith stiffly climbed out of the second car and walked forward to the vehicle in front.

Peter Howell unrolled his window as Smith came up. Below his own set of goggles, the Englishman's teeth flashed white in the near-total darkness. “Rather an exciting ride, wasn't it, Jon?”

Smith nodded wryly. “Perfectly delightful.” He rolled his neck and shoulders from side to side, hearing tense muscles and joints crack and pop. The last fifteen minutes of driving had been nerve-racking.

The night-vision equipment was top-of-the-line gear, but even so the images these third-generation goggles produced were not perfect — they were monochromatic, with a slight green tint, and they were a tiny bit grainy. You could drive without lights while wearing them, but it took real effort and serious concentration to avoid drifting off the road or colliding with the vehicle ahead of you.

In contrast, following the government sedan taking Kit Pierson from the FBI's Hoover Building to her own home in Upper Georgetown had been a piece of cake. Even late on Saturday night, Washington's streets were packed with cars, trucks, minivans, and taxis. It had been easy enough to hang two or three car lengths back without being noticed.

Neither Jon nor Peter had been surprised when Pierson took off only minutes later, this time using her own car. Both had been sure from the beginning that this sudden briefing for her superiors was only a blind, a way to cover her real reason for flying back so abruptly from New Mexico. But again, the task of following her discreetly was comparatively easy — at least at first. It had only gotten really difficult once she turned off the highway onto a succession of smaller side roads where traffic was sporadic at best. And Kit Pierson was no fool. She would have been bound to grow suspicious if she saw the same two pairs of headlights gleaming in her rearview mirror through mile after mile of darkened, nearly empty countryside.

That was when both Smith and Peter Howell had been forced to slip on their night-vision goggles and switch off their lights. Even so, they had been forced to hang back farther from her Passat than they would have preferred — always hoping they would not miss whichever tumoff or crossroads she finally took to make her rendezvous.

Smith looked up the gravel track. He could just make out a small house on the crest of a low hill. The lights were on, and he could see two cars parked outside. This looked like it could be the place they were hunting.

“What do you think?” he asked Peter quietly.

The Englishman pointed to the U.S. Geological Survey l:20,000-scale map open on the seat beside him. It was part of the set included in the equipment left for them at Andrews Air Force Base. The IR illuminators on their goggles allowed them to read the map. “This little drive doesn't go anywhere else but that farm up there,” he said. “And I doubt very seriously that our Ms. Pierson plans to take her sedan very far off-road.”

“So what's the plan?” Smith asked.

“I suggest we back up a quarter-mile or so,” Peter said. “I noticed a small copse of trees there which we can use as cover for the cars. Once we've got the rest of our gear on, we can make our way quietly up to that farmhouse on foot.” He showed his teeth again. “I, for one, should very much like to know who Ms. Pierson has chosen to visit so late at night. And what exactly they are discussing.”

Smith nodded grimly. He was suddenly quite sure that some of the answers he needed were locked away in that dimly lit house on the hill.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The ruins of the Chateau de Montceaux, known as the Chateau of the Queens, were hemmed in by the forest of Montceaux — a stretch of woods rising above the southern bank of the undulating River Marne, roughly thirty miles east of Paris. First built in the mid-1500s on the orders of the powerful, cunning, and crafty Queen Catherine de Medici, the wife of one king of France and the mother of three more, the elegant country palace and its vast park and hunting preserve had at last been abandoned around 1650. Now, after centuries of neglect, little remained — only the hollow shell of a grand stone entrance pavilion, the oblong moat, and sections of crumbling wall lined with gaping windows.

Strands of mist curled between the surrounding trees, slowly burning away as the morning sun climbed higher. The bells of the Cathedral of St-Etienne in Meaux, five miles away, rang out, summoning the faithful, few though they were these days, to Sunday Mass. Other bells pealed across

the peaceful countryside as the smaller parish churches in the nearby villages echoed the summons.

Two vans hauling a pair of trailers sat in a large clearing not far from the ruins. Signs emblazoned on the vehicles identified them as part of an organization called the Groupe d'Apergu Meteorologique, the Meteorological Survey Group. Several technicians were busy near the rear of each trailer, erecting two angled launch rails aimed almost due west. Each launch rail included a pneumatic catapult system powered by compressed air. Other men were fussing over a pair of propeller-driven unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, each roughly five feet long, with an eight-foot wingspan.

The tall auburn-haired man who called himself Nones stood close by, watching his team complete their work. Periodic reports from the sentries posted in the woods around the clearing crackled through his radio headset. There were no signs of any unwanted observation by the local farmers.

One of the UAV technicians, a stoop-shouldered Asian man with thinning black hair, rose slowly to his feet. He turned to the third of the Hor-atii with a relieved expression on his lined and weary face. “The payloads are secure. All engine, avionics, UHF, and autonomous control systems have been tested and are online. All global positioning navigation way-points have been configured and confirmed. Both craft are ready for flight.”

“Good,” Nones replied. “Then you may prepare for launch.”

He stepped back out of the way as the technicians carefully lifted the UAVs, which weighed roughly one hundred pounds apiece, and carried them over to the twin launch rails. His bright green eyes followed them appreciatively. These two unmanned aircraft were modeled on drones used by the U.S. Army for short-range tactical reconnaissance, communications jamming, and airborne nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons detection. Now he and his men would pioneer an entirely new use for these robotic fliers.

Nones switched frequencies, contacting the newly arrived surveillance team he had stationed in Paris. “Are you receiving data from the target area, Linden?” he asked.

“We are,” the Dutchman confirmed. “All remote sensors and cameras are operational.”

“And the weather conditions?”

“Temperature, air pressure, humidity, wind direction, and wind speed arc all well within the preset mission parameters,” Linden reported. “The Center recommends that you proceed when ready.”

“Acknowledged,” Nones said quietly. He swung round to the waiting UAV technicians. “Don masks and gloves,” he ordered.

They quickly obeyed, putting on the gas masks, respirators, and thick gloves intended to give them enough time to escape the immediate area if one of their aircraft crashed on launch. The third member of the Horatii did the same, donning his own protective gear.

“Catapults pressurized and standing by,” the Asian technician told him. The technician crouched at a control console set between the two angled rails. His fingers hovered over a set of switches.

Nones smiled. “Continue.”

The technician nodded. He flicked two switches. “Engine and propeller start.”

The twin-bladed propellers on both UAVs suddenly whirled into motion, spinning with a low-pitched whir that was almost impossible to hear more than a few yards away.

“Engines at full power.”

“Launch!” the tall green-eyed man commanded.

With a soft whoosh, the first pneumatic catapult fired — hurling the UAV attached to it up the angled rail and into the air in a high, curving arc. For an instant, at the end of this arc, the unmanned aircraft seemed ready to fall back toward the ground, but then it climbed again — buoyed now by the lift provided by its own wings and propeller. Still ascending, it cleared the trees and headed west on its preprogrammed course.

Ten seconds later, the second unmanned flier followed its counterpart into the air. Both drones, now almost invisible from the ground and too small to register on most radars, climbed steadily toward their cruising altitude of three thousand feet and flew toward Paris at roughly one hundred miles per hour.

Staying low, Jon Smith followed Peter Howell west across a wide field choked with tall weeds and thickets of jagged brambles. Their surroundings glowed faintly green through their night-vision goggles. A couple of hundred yards off to their left, the paved county road cut a straight line across the darkened landscape. Ahead, the ground sloped up, rising gently above a stagnant scum-covered pond on their right. The gravel access road Kit Pierson had turned onto snaked back and forth as it climbed the low hill in front of them.

Something sharp snagged Smith's shoulder, stabbing right through the thick cloth deep enough to draw blood. He gritted his teeth and went on. Peter was doing his best to lead them through the worst of the tangled vegetation, but there were places where they just had to bull through, ignoring the thorns and briars tearing at their dark clothing and black leather gloves.

Halfway up the hill, the Englishman dropped to one knee. He scanned the terrain around them carefully and then waved Smith forward to join him. The lights were still on at the farmhouse up on the crest.

Both men were dressed and equipped for a night reconnaissance mission across rough ground. Besides their AN/PVS 7 goggles, each wore a combat vest stuffed with the surveillance gear — cameras and various types of listening devices — left waiting for them at Andrews Air Force Base. Smith had a holster for his SIG-Sauer pistol strapped to his thigh, while Peter had the same kind of rig for the Browning Hi-Power he favored. For extra firepower in a real emergency, each also carried a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun slung across his back.

Peter shook off one of his gloves and then held up a wetted finger to test the direction of the soft, cool night breeze whispering around them. He nodded, pleased by the result. “Now there's a bit of good fortune. The wind is from the west.”

Smith waited. The other man had spent decades in the field, first for the SAS and then for MI6. Peter Howell had forgotten more about moving through potentially hostile territory than Smith had ever learned.

“This wind won't carry our scent ahead of us,” Peter explained. “If there are any dogs up there, they won't smell us coming.”

Peter slid his glove back on and led the way again. Both men crouched even lower as they came out onto the top of the shallow rise. They were within yards of an old, ruined barn — a hollowed-out, roofless wreck that was more a pile of broken, rotting boards than a standing structure. Beyond that, they could make out the shapes of two parked cars, the Volkswagen Passat belonging to Kit Pierson, and another, this one an older American make. And there was enough light leaking out through the mostly closed drapes of their target, a small one-story farmhouse, to make it glow brightly in their night-vision gear.

Smith saw that whoever owned the place had gone to the trouble of whacking away the tallest weeds and brambles in a rough circle around the building. He followed Peter down onto his belly and wriggled through the low grass after him, crossing the open space as quickly as possible to gain the cover provided by the parked cars.

“Where to now?” he murmured.

Peter nodded toward a big picture window on this side of the house, not far from the front door. “Over there, I should think,” he said softly. “I thought I saw a shadow moving behind those drapes a moment ago. Worth a look anyhow.” He glanced at Smith. “Cover me, will you, Jon?”

Smith tugged his SIG-Sauer out of the holster. “Whenever you're ready.”

The other man nodded once. Then he crawled rapidly across the patch of oil-stained concrete and disappeared into a patch of tall brush

growing right up against the side of the farmhouse. Only the night-vision goggles he was wearing let Smith keep track of him. To anyone watching with unaided eyes, Peter would have seemed nothing more than a moving shadow, a shadow that simply vanished into blackness.

The Englishman raised himself up onto his knees, carefully examining the window above him. Satisfied, he dropped flat and signaled Jon to come ahead.

Smith crawled over to join him as fast as he could, feeling terribly exposed along every inch of the way. He wriggled the last few feet into the weeds and lay still, breathing heavily.

Peter leaned close to his ear and motioned to the window. “Pierson is definitely inside.”

Smith smiled tightly. “Glad to hear it. I'd sure hate to have just wrecked my knees for nothing.” He rolled onto his side and tugged a handheld laser surveillance kit out of one of the Velcro-sealed pouches on his combat vest. He slipped on the attached headset, flipped a switch to activate the low-powered IR laser, and carefully aimed the device at the window above them.

If he could hold it steady enough, the laser beam would bounce back off the glass and pick up the vibrations induced in it by anyone talking inside the room. Then, assuming everything worked right, the electronics package should be able to translate those vibrations back into understandable sounds through his headphones.

Almost to his surprise, the system worked.

“Damn it, Kit,” he heard a man's voice growl angrily. “You can't back out of this operation now. We're going ahead, whether you like it or not. There are no other options. Either we destroy the Lazarus Movement — or it destroys us!”

Chapter Thirty

The man called Lazarus sat calmly behind a solid, age-darkened teak desk in his private office. The room was quiet, cool, and dimly lit. A ventilation system hummed softly in the background, bringing in air rigorously scrubbed clean of any trace of the outside world.

Much of the desk was taken up with a large computer-driven display. With the gentle flick of a finger on his keyboard, Lazarus switched rapidly between views relayed from cameras around the globe. One, apparently mounted aboard an aircraft, showed the winding trace of a river unrolling two or three thousand feet below. Villages, roads, bridges, and tracts of forest came into view and then slid off-camera. Another camera showed a dingy street crowded with stripped and vandalized automobiles. The street was lined with drab concrete-block buildings. Their windows and doors were heavily barricaded with steel bars.

Below the images on his display, three digital readouts showed the lo-

cal time, the time in Paris, and the time along the eastern seaboard of the United States. A secure satellite phone system sat next to the computer. Two blinking green lights indicated pending connections to two of his special action teams.

Lazarus smiled, reveling in the exquisite sensation of watching a complex, intricately crafted plan unfolding with absolutely perfect timing. With one command, he had set in motion the last of his needed field experiments — the tests so necessary to refine his chosen instruments of the planet's salvation. With another, he would begin the series of actions intended to throw the CIA, the FBI, and the British Secret Intelligence Service into self-destructive chaos.

Soon, he thought coldly, very soon. As the sun rose higher today, a horrified world would start to see its worst fears about the United States confirmed. Alliances would shatter. Old wounds would reopen. Long-held rivalries would burst again into open conflict. And by the time the full magnitude of what was really happening became clear, it would be impossible for anyone to stop him.

His internal phone chimed once. Lazarus tapped the speaker button. “Yes?”

“Our drones are within fifty kilometers of the target,” reported the voice of his senior technician. “Both are operating within the expected norms.”

“Very good. Continue as planned,” Lazarus ordered. He tapped the button, cutting the circuit. Another gentle flick of his finger completed the satellite connection to one of his action teams.

“The Paris operation is under way,” he told the man waiting patiently on the other end. “Be ready to carry out your instructions on my next signal.”

Three big 4x4 trucks were parked just inside a patch of scrub pines growing along the crest of a ridge several hundred yards west of Burke's ram-

shackle farm. Twelve men wearing black jackets and sweaters and dark-colored jeans waited in the shelter of this clump of stunted trees. Four of them were posted as sentries at different points around the outside edge, keeping watch through British-made Simrad night-vision binoculars. Seven squatted patiently on the sandy soil farther inside the grove. They were busy making last-minute weapons checks on their assortment of assault rifles, submachine guns, and pistols.

The twelfth, the tall green-eyed man named Terce, sat in the cab of one of the 4x4s. “Understood,” he said into his secure cell phone. “We are standing by.” He hung up and went back to monitoring a heated conversation relayed through his radio set. An angry voice sounded in his headset. “Either we destroy the Lazarus Movement — or it destroys us!”

“Melodrama doesn't suit you, Hal,” a woman's voice answered icily. “I'm not suggesting that we surrender to the Movement. But TOCSIN itself is no longer worth the price we're paying — or the risks we're running. And I meant what I said over the phone earlier: If this lousy operation blows up in my face, I don't plan to be the only one taking a fall.”

Listening to the transmission from a bug he had planted earlier that night, the second member of the Horatii nodded to himself. The CIA officer was quite right. FBI Deputy Assistant Director Katherine Pierson was no longer reliable. Not that it mattered very much anymore, he thought with a trace of grim amusement.

Automatically Terce checked the magazine on his Walther, screwed on the silencer, and then slid the pistol back into his coat pocket. He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. There were only minutes at most remaining before he would need to act.

A soft, insistent beep signaled a priority call from one of his sentries. He switched channels. “Go ahead.”

“This is McRae. There's something moving up near the house,” the lookout warned in a soft lowland Scots burr.

“I'm on my way,” Terce said. The big man slid out of the 4x4, ducking his head to clear the frame, and hurried to the edge of the pine woods. He found McRae crouched behind a fallen tree trunk overgrown with vines and moved low into position beside him.

“Take a look for yourself. In those bushes and tall grass close to the front door,” the short, wiry Scot said, pointing. “I can't make out anything now, mind you, but I saw movement there just a minute ago.”

The green-eyed man raised his own binoculars, slowly scanning the south side of Burke's house. Two man-shaped blotches leaped immediately into focus, bright white thermal blooms against the cooler gray of the dense vegetation in which they lay hidden.

“You have very good eyes, McRae,” Terce said calmly. The night-vision gear used by his sentries worked by amplifying all available ambient light. They turned night into eerie, green-tinted day, but they could not see “heat” in the way his special equipment could. Weighing over five pounds and with a price tag of nearly sixty thousand dollars, his French-made “Sophie” thermal-imaging binoculars were top-of-the-line in every way and far more effective. At night, under these overcast skies, the best passive light intensifier systems had a maximum range of three or four hundred yards, and often much less. In contrast, using thermal imaging he could detect the heat signature made by a human being up to two miles away — even through thick cover.

Terce wondered whether it was mere coincidence that these two spies appeared so soon after Kit Pierson arrived. Or had she brought them with her — either knowingly or unknowingly? The big man shrugged away the thought. He did not believe in coincidences. Nor, for that matter, did his ultimate employer.

Terce considered his options. For a moment he regretted the Center's decision to transfer his specialist sniper to the Paris-based security force. It would have been simpler and far less dangerous to eliminate these two enemies with a pair of well-aimed long-range rifle shots. Then he quickly realized wishing would not alter the circumstances. His team was trained and equipped for close-quarters action — so those were the tactics he would have to employ.

Terce handed the binoculars to McRae. “Keep an eye on those two,” he ordered coolly. “Let me know if they make any sudden moves.” Then he pulled out his cell phone and hit a preset number.

The phone on the other end rang once. “Burke here.”

“This is Terce,” he said quietly. “Do not react openly in any way to what I am about to say. Do you understand me?”

There was a short pause. “Yes, I understand you,” Burke said at last.

“Good. Now then, listen carefully. My security team has detected hostile activity near your house. You are under close observation. Very close observation. Within meters, in fact.”

“That's very… interesting,” the CIA officer said tightly. He hesitated briefly. “Can your people handle this situation on their own?”

“Most definitely,” Terce assured him.

“And do you have a time frame for that?” Burke asked.

The big man's bright green eyes gleamed in the darkness. “Minutes, Mr. Burke. Only minutes.”

“I see.” Again Burke hesitated. Finally, he asked, “Should I consider this an interagency matter?”

Terce knew that the other man was asking if Kit Pierson was somehow responsible for the snoopers now almost literally on his doorstep. He smiled. At this point, whether that was true or not was immaterial. “I think it would be wise to do so.”

“That's too bad,” the CIA officer said edgily. “Really too bad.”

'Yes, it is,“ the big man agreed. ”For now, hold tight where you are. Out."

Terce flipped the phone shut. Then he retrieved his thermal-imaging binoculars from McRae. “Go back to the vehicles and bring the others here,” he said. “But I want them to come quietly.” He grinned wolfishly. “Tell them they're going hunting.”

“Who was that, Hal?” Kit Pierson asked, clearly puzzled.

“The duty officer at Langley,” Burke told her, speaking slowly and distinctly. His voice sounded strained and unnatural. “The NSA just sent over a courier with a few Movement-related intercepts….”

Jon Smith listened closely. He frowned. Still holding the laser microphone aimed at the window above him, he glanced at Peter Howell. “Something's wrong,” he whispered. “Burke just got a phone call and now he's gone all stiff. He's just bullshitting, not really saying anything.”

“Do you think he's tumbled to us?” Peter asked quietly.

“Maybe. But I don't see how.”

“We may have underestimated this fellow,” Peter said. The corners of his mouth turned down. “A cardinal sin in this line of work, I'm afraid. I suspect Mr. Burke of the CIA has more resources available to him here than we had hoped.”

“Meaning he has backup?”

“Quite possibly.” The Englishman dug the USGS survey map out of one of the pockets on his vest and studied it, tracing the contour lines and terrain features with one gloved finger. He tapped the outline of a wooded ridge not far off to the west. “If I wanted to keep a good, close eye on this house, that's where I would put my observation post.”

Smith felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Peter was right. That ridge offered a clear view of most of the ground around the farmhouse, including their current position. “What do you suggest?”

“An immediate retreat,” the pale-eyed man said crisply, stuffing the survey map back into his vest pocket. He pulled the Heckler &Koch MP5 submachine gun over his head and yanked back on the cocking handle, chambering a 9mm round. “We don't know how strong the opposition is, and I don't see any point in loitering about to learn the hard way. We've acquired some useful information, Jon. Let's not push our luck further tonight.”

Smith nodded, already putting the laser microphone and its associated gear away. “Good point.” He readied his own submachine gun.

“Then follow me.” Peter rolled to his feet and then, bent almost double, scurried back to the cover offered by the two cars parked close to the house. Smith followed him, moving as fast as he could while also staying low to the ground. At any second he expected to hear a startled shout or feel the sudden impact of a bullet. But he heard and felt only the silence of the night and the pounding of his own accelerating pulse.

From there, they moved past the ruined barn and on down the slope into the bramble-choked field below, trying to keep the bulk of the little hill between them and the higher ridge to the west. Peter led the way, ghosting quietly through the snarled clumps of thorns and waist-high weeds with a grace born out of years of training and experience.

They were close to the edge of the stagnant pond when the Englishman suddenly went prone, hugging the dirt behind a patch of raspberry bushes. Smith dropped flat behind him and then crawled forward, using his elbows and knees while cradling the MP5 against his chest. He tried hard not to breathe in too deeply. They were below the level of the cool breeze whispering across the field, and the air was thick with the pent-up stench of algae and rotting fruit.

“Christ,” Peter muttered. “That's torn it! Listen.”

Smith heard the faint noise of a powerful engine, growing steadily louder. Cautiously he raised his head to peer over the top of the closest bush. About two hundred yards away a large black 4x4 cruised slowly past on the county road, traveling east. It was driving without lights.

“You think they'll spot our cars?” he asked softly.

Peter nodded grimly. The small stand of trees in which they had parked would not hide their vehicles from a determined search. “They're sure to,” he said. “And when they do, all hell will break loose — if it hasn't already.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “And it has, alas,” he murmured. “Take a look behind us, Jon. But do it slowly.”

Smith carefully turned his head and saw a skirmish line of five men wearing night-vision goggles and dark clothing slowly descending the gentle slope behind them. Each carried a submachine gun or an assault rifle cradled in both hands.

Jon felt his mouth go dry. The closest of the armed men hunting them was already just a little more than one hundred yards away. He and Peter were trapped.

“Any ideas?” Smith hissed.

“Yes. We drive those five men to ground and then we both run like rabbits,” Peter answered. “Stay away from the road, though. Not enough cover in that direction. We'll head north.” He spun around and came up on one knee with his submachine gun at the ready, followed a second later by Smith.

For an instant Jon hesitated, pausing with his finger already on the trigger — wondering if he should shoot to kill or simply to frighten. Were these some of the same men who had already tried to kill him? Or allied to them? Or were they regular CIA personnel or private security guards roped in by Burke to guard his property?

Their sudden movement attracted the attention of one of the gunmen moving down the hill. He froze. “Contact, front!” he yelled in heavily accented English. Then he opened fire with his submachine gun, spraying a hail of 9mm bullets toward the two kneeling men.

Smith's doubts dissolved as the incoming rounds snapped and whined through the air around him. These guys were mercenaries, and they were not trying to take prisoners. He and Peter fired back, squeezing off a series of aimed three-round bursts with their MP5s — walking their fire from opposite ends of the enemy skirmish line toward the middle. One of the five gunmen screamed suddenly and folded over, hit in the stomach. The other four dived for cover.

“Let's go!” Peter said sharply, tapping Smith on the shoulder.

Both men jumped to their feet and sprinted off into the darkness, angling north, well away from the county road. Again, the Englishman led the way, but this time he did not waste any time trying to find easier paths through the tangle of brush and brambles. Instead, he crashed right through even the densest briar patches at full bore. Stealth was out in favor of speed. They needed to cover as much ground as possible before the surviving gunmen recovered from their surprise and started shooting again.

Smith ran fast, his heart pounding as he followed right in Peter's wake. He kept his gloved hands and the submachine gun out in front of him, trying to keep his face from being lacerated by the welter of splintered branches and sharp-edged thorns. Brambles tugged and tore at his arms and legs, jabbing and slashing right through the thick cloth. Sweat trickled down his forearms, stinging like fire when it mingled with his new puncture wounds, cuts, and scrapes.

More gunfire erupted behind them. Rounds zipped through the thick undergrowth on either side — clipping off leaves and twigs and spattering the fragments in all directions.

The two men threw themselves down and wriggled round to face the way they had come, seeking cover in a slight depression worn away by runoff from the hill above them. “Determined bastards,” Peter commented coolly as rifle bullets and submachine gun rounds ripped past right over their heads. “I'll give them that.” He listened intently. “That's only two men firing. We hit one. So where are the other two?”

“Closing in on us,” Smith said grimly. “While their pals cover them.”

“Quite likely,” Peter agreed. He smiled suddenly. “Let's teach them that's not such a good idea, shall we?”

Jon nodded.

“Right,” Peter said calmly. “Here we go.”

Ignoring the bullets still tearing up the brush around them, both men reared up and began firing — again sweeping three-round bursts back and forth across the field in front of them. Smith had a quick impression of startled yells and barely glimpsed shapes diving behind clumps of tall weeds and brambles. More weapons opened up with a stuttering, clattering roar as the gunmen they had driven prone began shooting back.

Smith and Peter dropped back into the shallow drainage ditch and crawled rapidly away along its meandering trace. It fell away to the east, following the slight slope of the long-abandoned field. After moving about fifty yards, they risked poking their heads up for another quick look. One of their pursuers was still firing short bursts in their general direction in an effort to pin them down. The other three gunmen were in motion again, but they were also heading east — rapidly deploying into a dispersed firing line across the width of the forty-acre field.

“Damn it,” Peter said under his breath. “What the hell are they up to now?”

Smith's eyes narrowed. Their enemies no longer seemed interested in closing with them. Instead, the bad guys were setting up a cordon that would effectively cut them off from the road and from the vehicles they had left hidden in among the trees still several hundred yards away. “We're being herded!” he realized suddenly.

The Englishman stared at him for a second or two. Then his jaw tightened and he nodded abruptly. “You're right, Jon. I should have seen it sooner. They're acting as beaters — setting up to flush us out for the rest of the shooting party.” He shook his head in disgust. “We're being treated like a covey of bloody grouse or quails.”

Almost against his will, Smith grinned back at him, fighting down the urge to laugh out loud. His old friend sounded genuinely insulted at being manipulated so contemptuously by their enemies.

Peter turned his head, speculatively eyeing the rougher, even more overgrown stretch of old farmland to the north. “They'll have a nasty little ambush set out somewhere up that way,” he said, stripping out the used magazine on his submachine gun and inserting a new thirty-round clip. “Getting past that will be tricky.”

“Sure,” Smith said. “But we do have at least one advantage.”

Peter raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Oh? Care to enlighten me?”

“Yep.” Smith patted his own MP5. “The last time I checked, grouse and quails don't shoot back.”

This time it was Peter's turn to suppress a snort of rueful laughter. “True enough,” he agreed quietly. “Very well, Jon, let's go and see if we can turn the hunters into the hunted.”

They left the drainage ditch and crawled off to the north. Their path through the thick undergrowth was a circuitous one. They were following the rambling narrow trails made by small animals that made their dens and warrens in the overgrown fields. Both men stayed very low, hugging the ground and using their feet, knees, and elbows to wriggle forward as fast as they could without making too much noise or shaking the tangled tufts of brush and grass above them. The knowledge that an enemy force lurked unseen somewhere ahead in the darkness again made stealth nearly as vital as speed.

Smith could feel droplets of sweat rolling down through the dirt streaking his forehead. He shook them away impatiently, not wanting them to drip into his eyes under the mask holding his night-vision goggles. Plant stalks and curling vines loomed up suddenly in his green-tinted vision and then vanished off to the sides as he squirmed past. Deep in the heart of these jumbled thickets, his field of view was down to just a few feet. The air was warm and thick with the smell of dank, mossy earth and fresh animal droppings.

From time to time bullets hissed over their heads or shredded the bushes and thickets off on either flank. All four of the mercenaries deployed in a line behind them were shooting now — firing occasional bursts into the field to force their unseen quarry toward the ambush set to kill them.

Smith's breathing was becoming labored under the strain and physical exertion imposed by crawling so far and so rapidly. He concentrated on following Peter as closely as he could — watching carefully to see where the older man put his elbows and feet to avoid disturbing the vegetation through which they were moving.

Suddenly Peter froze. For long seconds he stayed absolutely motionless, watching and listening. Then, slowly and carefully, he held out one gloved hand and waved Jon forward to his side.

Smith peered cautiously through a screen of tall grass, studying the terrain in front of them. They were very near the northern edge of the field. The weathered and rotting remnants of an old rail fence stretched to the east and west. Just beyond the broken-down fence, the ground fell away gently into a little hollow before rising again in a low embankment that ran off to the northeast. A few patches of scrub brush and small birch trees dotted the forward slopes of this rise, but the countryside was generally more open here — offering less cover and concealment.

Peter jabbed a finger toward this elevation. Then he made the hand signal for “enemy.”

Smith nodded. That embankment was a likely spot for the ambush they were being herded toward. Anyone stationed just behind its crest would have decent fields of observation and fire along most of this side of the rundown farm. He frowned. The odds against them were stacking up fast.

Peter saw the look on his face and shrugged. “Can't be helped,” he murmured. He pulled the spent magazine for his MP5 out of the ammo pouch on his combat vest. He waited while Jon followed suit.

“Very well,” Peter said very quietly. “Here's the plan.” He held up the empty magazine. “As a distraction, we toss these as far to the right as we can. Then we make a dash over the crest, turn right, and assault along the reverse slope — killing hostiles we meet.”

Smith stared back at him. “That's it?”

“There's no time for anything fancy, Jon,” the Englishman told him patiently. “We must hit them hard and fast. Speed and audacity are the only cards we have to play. If either of us goes down, the other must press on without him. Agreed?”

Smith nodded. He did not like any of this, but the other man was right. In this situation, any delay — for any reason, even helping an injured friend — would be fatal. They were so heavily outnumbered that their only chance of escape was to fight their way through anyone in front of them and then keep on moving.

Holding the empty magazine in his left hand and gripping the 1VIP5 in his right, he rose slowly to one knee, getting ready to rush across the tumbledown fence and the open ground beyond it. Beside him, Peter did the same.

Another burst of random gunfire broke out behind them. It faded, leaving only silence.

“Here we go,” Peter hissed. “Get ready. Set. Now?”

Both men hurled the empty clips as hard as they could, flinging them high into the air and off to the right. The curved metal magazines landed with a rustle and a clatter — suddenly loud in the night.

Instantly Smith jumped up and ran forward. He dived straight over the split-rail fence, hit the ground rolling, and bounced back up on his feet with Peter just a few yards away.

Smith heard startled shouts from behind them and off to the right, but the enemy had spotted them too late. Still running flat out, he and Peter charged up the gentle slope and over the top of the low rise.

Smith spun immediately to the right, submachine gun gripped in both hands, searching for targets in the weird green half-light supplied by his night-vision gear. There! He saw a shape moving beneath the low-hanging branches of a birch tree less than ten yards away. It was a man, who had been lying prone peering over the crest, turning frantically toward them — trying to bring his own weapon, an Uzi, to bear.

Reacting faster, Jon swung his own MP5 on-target and squeezed the trigger, sending three 9mm rounds into the enemy gunman at point-blank range. All three slammed home with tremendous force. The impact hurled the man backward. He slid to the ground and lay splayed against the chalk-white trunk of the birch tree.

They glided on, following the embankment as it angled northeast and separating as they moved so that no single enemy burst could hit them both. The slope on this side was a mix of birch trees, scrub pines, and clumps of brush, all broken up by tiny patches of open ground. Confused by the sudden burst of shooting, the four mercenaries deployed as “beaters” to drive them into the ambush were firing wildly now — flaying the wrong side of the rise. Bullets ricocheting off trees tumbled high overhead, buzzing angrily like bees.

Smith moved cautiously into a small clearing and caught a sudden flicker of movement out of the corner of his right eye. He spun around and saw the blackened barrel of an M16 assault rifle poking out from behind a vine-covered tree stump. It was traversing in his direction! He threw himself down just as the hidden gunman fired. One 5.56mm round grazed his left shoulder, tearing a bloody gash through cloth and skin. Two more rifle bullets tore long furrows through the earth close by.

Jon rolled away, desperately trying to shake the enemy rifleman's aim. More rounds followed him, again slashing at the ground only inches away from his head. Still rolling, he looked for cover — any kind of cover-within reach. There was nothing. He was trapped out in the open.

And then Peter appeared behind him and opened fire, methodically hammering the tree stump with controlled bursts. Pieces of bark and shredded vine flew away through the air. The hidden rifleman screamed once, a piercing shriek, and then fell silent.

“Are you all right, Jon?” Peter called softly.

Smith checked himself over. The graze on his shoulder was bleeding and it would hurt like hell soon enough. But miraculously that was the only wound he had taken.

“I'm okay,” he reported, still breathing hard as he recovered from the shock of nearly being gunned down so easily. Moving out into that clearing had been a big mistake, he realized — the kind of screwup raw recruits made in training. He shook his head once, angry with himself for the error.

“Then go make sure that bastard's really down and dead. I'll cover you,” Peter said urgently. “But do it quickly.”

“On my way.” Smith scrambled back to his feet and moved out of the little space of open ground, circling through the undergrowth to come at the tree stump from behind and out of the Englishman's field of fire. He pushed cautiously through a tangle of tall brush and saw a body on the ground, facedown. The M16 lay several feet away.

Was the gunman really dead or badly wounded or only lying doggo? he wondered. For a moment, Jon thought about firing a quick burst into the body to finish the job. His finger tightened on the trigger. Then he eased off, with a frown. In the heat of battle, he could gun down an enemy without hesitating, but he would not shoot someone who might be lying helpless and in terrible pain. Not and stay true to the oaths he had sworn and, perhaps more important, to his own sense of right and wrong.

Smith stepped closer, sighting along the barrel of the MP5. He could see blood on the ground, trickling out from under the man's body. The fallen rifleman was short and wiry, with a dusting of cropped reddish hair on the back of his small round head. Jon drew nearer still, preparing to bend down and feel for a pulse.

More gunshots rang out from somewhere not far ahead. They were answered immediately by a short burst from Peter's weapon.

Distracted, Smith turned his head to try to see where the fire was coming from. He crouched lower, seeking cover.

That was when the “dead” man lunged at him, hurling himself forward with lightning speed. He slammed headlong into Jon's stomach and knocked him down. The submachine gun went flying off into the bushes.

Smith writhed away and saw a knife driving toward him. He rolled to the side and came back up, just in time to block another thrust with the outer edge of his left arm. The blade sliced through his sleeve and slashed the skin beneath. It grated off the bone, sending a wave of pain flaming through his mind. He forced the agony aside and struck back with the edge of his right hand, hacking down hard on the red-haired man's wrist.

The knife fell out of the man's suddenly paralyzed fingers.

Smith kept moving, reversing his strike — slamming his right elbow straight back into the shorter rifleman's nose. He felt a sickening crunch as the impact shattered pieces of cartilage, driving them upward and into his enemy's brain. The red-haired man dropped without a sound and lav motionless, dead for real this time.

Jon sat back, breathing deeply. He could feel blood dripping from the deep gash on his left arm. I had better bind that up now, he thought dully.

No point in leaving a blood trail for the bad guys to follow. He shook out a field dressing from one of the pockets on his vest and quickly wound the gauze and cotton around the injured arm.

There was a soft whistle from the woods. He looked up as Peter loomed out of the darkness.

“Sorry about that,” Peter said. “Another one popped his head up and took a shot at me.”

“Did you nail him?”

“Oh, yes,” Peter said with satisfaction. “Well and truly.” He dropped to one knee and rolled the red-haired man Smith had killed over onto his back. Peter's pale blue eyes widened slightly at the sight of the man's face, and he sucked in his breath.

“You recognize that guy?” Jon asked, watching his reaction.

Peter nodded. He looked up with a grim, worried expression on his weathered face. “Fellow's name was McRae,” he said softly. “When I knew him he was a trooper in the SAS. Had a reputation as a troublemaker — very good in any fight, a very nasty bastard out of one. Several years back he crossed the line once too often and got himself booted out of the regiment. Last I heard, he was working as a mercenary in Africa and Asia — with the occasional bit of freelance work for various intelligence services.”

He got up and went over to retrieve Smith's submachine gun.

“Including MI6?” Jon asked quietly, taking the weapon from him and climbing stiffly to his feet.

Peter nodded reluctantly. “On occasion.”

“Do you think some of your people in London could be involved in this covert war Pierson and Burke are running?” Smith said.

Peter shrugged. “At the moment, I don't really know what to think, Jon.” He looked up as the rippling chatter of automatic weapons fire crashed out again from the other side of the low embankment. "But for now, our friends over there are getting restless. And they'll be coming in this direction in force very soon. I think we'd best break contact while we can. We need to find a place where we can safelv arrange new transport."

Smith nodded. That made good sense. By now, their enemies were sure to have found the cars they had brought with them from Andrews Air Force Base. Trying to retrieve the two vehicles would only mean walking back into the trap they had just escaped.

He felt the dressing on his left arm, checking to make sure it had not yet soaked all the way through. It was still dry on the outside. He turned back to the Englishman. “Okay, lead on, Peter. I'll keep an eye on the rear.”

The two men turned and trotted north, fading deeper into the darkened countryside — keeping to the shelter of the trees and tall brush whenever possible. Behind them, the harsh, echoing rattle of gunfire slowly died away.

Chapter Thirty-One

The first burst of automatic weapons fire outside the farmhouse brought Kit Pierson to her feet in a rush. Drawing her service pistol, a 9mm Smith & Wesson, the FBI agent moved rapidly to the window, peering out through the narrow slit between the drapes. She could not see anything, but the sound of gunfire continued, echoing loudly across the low, rolling hills of the Virginia countryside. Heart pounding, she crouched lower. Whatever was going on had all the hallmarks of a pitched battle being fought close by.

“Trouble, Kit?” she heard Hal Burke say with a nasty edge in his voice.

Pierson glanced over her shoulder at him. Her eyes widened. The square-jawed CIA officer had drawn his own weapon, a Beretta. And he held it aimed right at her.

“What kind of game are you playing, Hal?” she demanded, holding perfectly still — all too aware that, drunk or not, he could not miss at this range. Her mouth felt dry. She could see beads of sweat forming on Burke's forehead. The muscles around his right eye twitched slightly.

“This is no game,” he snapped back. “As I'm sure you know.” He motioned with the muzzle of the Beretta. “Now I want you to put your weapon down on the floor — but carefully… very carefully. And then I want you to sit back down in your chair. With your hands where I can see them.”

“Take it easy, Hal,” Pierson said softly, trying hard to conceal her fear and her sudden conviction that Burke had lost his grip on reality. “I don't know what you think I've done, but I promise you that—”

Her words were drowned by another burst of shooting from outside the house.

“Do what I say, damn it!” the CIA officer growled. His finger tightened dangerously on the trigger. “Move!”

Feeling ice-cold, Pierson slowly knelt and put her Smith & Wesson down on the floor, butt first.

“Now, kick it toward me — but do it gently!” Burke ordered.

She complied, sliding the pistol toward him across the stained hardwood floor.

“Sit!”

Angry now, both at the other man and with herself for being so afraid of him, Pierson obeyed, slowly lowering herself into the lumpy, frayed armchair. She held her hands up, palms outward, so that he could see that she was not an immediate threat. “I'd still like to know what I'm supposed to have done, Hal — and what all that shooting is about.”

Burke raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Why try to pull the innocent act, Kit? It's too late for that. You're not an idiot. And neither am I, for that matter. Did you really think you could sneak an FBI surveillance team onto my property without my knowing?”

She shook her head, desperately now. “I don't know what you're talking about. Nobody came with me — or followed me. I was clean all the way out from D.C. to here!”

'Lying won't get you anywhere,“ he said coldly. His right eye twitched again, fluttering rapidly as the muscles contracted and then relaxed. ”In fact, it just pisses me off."

The phone on his desk rang once. Without taking his eyes or his pistol off her, Burke reached out and grabbed it before it could ring again. “Yes?” he said tightly. He listened for a moment and then shook his head. “No, I have the situation here under control. You can come ahead. The door's unlocked.” He hung up.

“Who was that?” she asked.

The CIA officer smiled thinly, without any humor at all. “Someone who wants very much to meet you,” he said.

Bitterly regretting her earlier decision to confront Burke in person, Kit Pierson sat tensely in the armchair — rapidly considering various plans to extricate herself from this mess and then equally rapidly discarding them as impractical, suicidal, or both. She heard the front door open and then close.

Her eyes widened as a very tall and very broad-shouldered man stepped quietly into the study, moving with the dangerous grace of a tiger. His curiously green eyes gleamed in the dim light cast by the lamp on Burke's desk. For a moment she thought he was the same man described by Colonel Smith in his report on the aftermath of the Teller Institute disaster — the leader of the “terrorist” unit that had conducted the attack. Then she shook her head. That was impossible. The leader of that attack had been consumed by the nanophages released by the bombs that had shattered the Institute's labs.

“This is Terce,” Hal Burke said brusquely. “He commands one of my TOCSIN action teams. His men were on guard outside. They're the ones who spotted your covert surveillance guys prowling around this house.”

“Whoever's out there isn't connected to me,” Pierson said again, straining to put every ounce of conviction she could muster into her voice. Every FBI manual on the psychology of conspiracies stressed the inherent and overwhelming fears of those involved of betrayal from within. As head of the Bureau's Counter-Terrorism Division, she had often made use of those fears — playing on them to break apart suspected cells, turning the would-be terrorists on one another like rats trapped in a pit. She bit down on her lower lip, tasting the salt tang of her own blood. Now the same forces of paranoia and suspicions were at work here, threatening her life.

“No dice, Kit,” Burke told her coldly. “I don't believe in coincidences, so you're either a liar — or a screwup. And this operation can't afford either one.”

The big man named Terce said nothing at first. Instead, he reached down and scooped her pistol off the floor. He slid it into one of the pockets of his black windbreaker and then turned to the CIA officer. “Now, give me your own weapon, Mr. Burke,” he said gently. “If you please.”

The smaller man blinked in surprise, plainly caught off-guard b\ the request. “What?”

“Give me your weapon,” Terce repeated. He stepped closer to Burke, looming over the CIA officer. “It would be… safer… for us all.”

“Why?”

The green-eyed man nodded at the half-empty bottle of Jim Beam on the desk. “Because you have been drinking a bit more than is wise, Mr. Burke, and I do not fully trust either your judgment or your reflexes at this moment. You can rest easy. My men have the situation well in hand.”

More gunfire rattled in the distance, farther away now.

For the space of a heartbeat Burke sat staring up at the taller man. His eyes narrowed angrily. But then he did as he was asked, handing the Beretta to Terce with a sullen frown.

Kit Pierson felt some of the tension leave her shoulders. She breathed out. Whatever else he was, the leader of this TOCSIN action team was no fool. Disarming Burke so quickly was a sound move. It was also one that might help her defuse this ridiculous and incendiary situation. She leaned forward. “Look, let's see what we can do to sort this mess out rationally,” she said coolly. “First, if anyone from the FBI did tail me here, they certainly did it without my knowledge or my consent—”

“Be silent, Ms. Pierson!” the green-eyed man said coldly. “I do not care how or why you were followed. Your motives and your competence, or lack of it, are immaterial.”

Kit Pierson stared back at him, suddenly aware that she was in as much danger from this man as she had been with Burke — and perhaps a great deal more.

Engines buzzing softly, the two UAVs flew on at three thousand feet. Below, forests, roads, and villages slid past and then vanished in the early morning haze behind them. The sun, rising east above the deep, undulating valleys of the Seine and the Marne, was a large ball of red fire outlined against the thin fading gray mist.

Closer to Paris, the landscape began changing, becoming more congested and crowded. Ancient villages surrounded by woods and farmland gave way to larger, more modern suburbs surrounded by intertwined motorways and rail lines. High-rise apartment buildings appeared ahead, stabbing up at irregular intervals in a great arc around the inner core of the city itself.

Long white contrails formed in the sky high above the two robot aircraft, vast trails of ice crystals floating in the clear, cold air, each marking the passage of a large passenger jet. The UAVs were nearing the flight paths to and from two airports — Le Bourget and Charles de Gaulle. Given their very small size, the odds of radar detection were very low, but those who controlled them saw no point in taking unnecessary risks. Responding to preprogrammed instructions, each drone dropped lower, descending to just five hundred feet and throttling back to maintain a near-constant airspeed of around one hundred miles per hour.

Field Experiment Operations Room, Inside the Center

The Center's operations room was located deep within the complex, secure behind a number of locked doors accessible only to those with the very highest clearances. Inside the darkened chamber, several scientists and technicians sat in front of large consoles, constantly monitoring the pictures and data streaming in from Paris — both from the ground sensors planted at various points and those onboard the two UAVs. Updates of wind direction, speed, humidity, and barometric pressure were automatically fed into a sophisticated targeting program. Two large screens showed the terrain ahead and below the twin drones. Numbers in the lower right corner of each display — the range to target — counted down, flickering from time to time as the program made carefully calculated adjustments to each robot aircraft's aim point. The control room personnel sat up straighter, watching with growing tension and excitement as those range numbers steadied up and began sliding ever more rapidly toward zero.

0.4 km, 0.3 km, 0.15 km… the command “Initiate” flashed in red on both screens. Instantly the targeting program transmitted an encrypted radio signal, relaying it through a communications satellite high above the Earth and then back down to the drones aloft just north of Paris.

More and more people ventured out on the dingy, run-down streets around the slum housing complexes of La Courneuve. A few were heading for the nearest Metro station on their way to whatever menial jobs they had been able to find. More were women carrying baskets and bags — mothers, wives, and grandmothers sent out to shop for the day's food. Some were families strolling toward the wooded spaces and parkland north of the suburb. Sunday morning was a rare opportunity for parents to give their children a taste of the open air away from the crime-ridden, graffiti-smeared streets and alleys, and the trash-heaped hallways of the Cite des Quatre Milk. The thieves, thugs, pushers, and drug addicts who preyed on them were mostly asleep, barricaded in the bare concrete apartments provided by the French welfare state.

Flying on parallel courses now, the two UAVs climbed again, rising to just over one thousand feet. Still moving at one hundred miles an hour, they crossed over a wide avenue and entered the airspace above La Courneuve. Aboard first one and then the other drone, control relays cycled, triggering the twin canisters slung below their wings. With a sinister hiss, each canister began spewing its contents in an invisible stream.

Hundreds of billions of Stage III nanophages fell across a huge swathe of La Courneuve, slowly raining down out of the sky in an undetected cloud of death and imminent slaughter. Vast numbers drifted among the thousands of unsuspecting people caught outside and were inhaled unnoticed — pulled into their lungs with every breath. Tens of billions more of the microscopic phages were drawn into the huge air ducts atop the slum high-rises and spread through ventilation shafts to apartments on every floor. Once the phages were inside, air currents wafted them through every room, settling unseen on those sleeping, drowsing in a drugged stupor, or mindlessly watching television.

Most of the phages stayed inert, conserving their limited power, silently spreading through the blood and tissues of those they had infected while waiting the go signal that would unleash them. Like the Stage II nanodevices used at the Teller Institute, however, roughly one out of every hundred thousand was a control phage — a larger silicon sphere packed with a wide array of sophisticated biochemical sensors. Their power packs went active immediately. They scoured through their host bodies, seeking any trace of one of dozens of precoded conditions, illnesses, allergies, and syndromes. The first positive reading by any single sensor triggered an immediate burst of the messenger molecules that would send the smaller killer phages into a frenzy of destruction.

Several miles south and west of La Courneuve, the six-man surveillance team occupied the upper floor and attic of an old gray stone building in the heart of the Marais District of Paris. Microwave and radio antennae dotted the steep, sloping tiled roof above them — gathering every scrap of data beamed their way by the sensors and cameras set up around the nanophage target area. From there the data flowed down into banks of networked computers. There it would be stored and evaluated to eventu-ally be relayed by coded signal and satellite to the distant Center. To conserve bandwidth and preserve operational security, only the most crucial information was passed on in real time.

The white-haired man named Linden stared over the shoulder of one of his men, watching the data pour into his machines. Linden was careful to avoid looking too closely at a TV monitor showing images captured from the streets surrounding the Cite des Quatre Milk. Let the scientists observe their own handiwork, he thought grimly. He had his own tasks to perform. Instead, he glanced at another screen, this one showing pictures relayed from the two UAVs. They had completed their orbits over La Courneuve and they were now flying east, roughly paralleling the course of the Canal de l'Ourcq.

He keyed the radio mike attached to his headset, reporting to Nones at the launch site near Meaux. “Field Experiment Three is proceeding. Data collection is nominal. Your drones are on their programmed course and speed. ETA is roughly twenty minutes.”

“Is there any sign of detection?” the third of the Horatii asked calmly.

Linden glanced at Vitor Abrantes. The young Portuguese was charged witli monitoring all police, fire, ambulance, and air traffic control frequencies. Computers set to scan for certain key words aided him in this task. “Anything?” Linden asked.

The young man shook his head. “Nothing yet. The Parisian emergency operators have received several calls from the target area, but nothing they have so far been able to understand.”

Linden nodded. He and his team had received a cursory briefing on the effects of the Stage III nanophages — enough to know that the soft tissues of the mouth and tongue were among the first to dissolve. He clicked his mike again. “You are clear so far,” he told Nones. “The authorities are still asleep.”

Brown-eyed, brown-haired, still slender, and pretty, Nouria Besseghir gripped the hand of her five-year-old daughter, Tasa, tightly, urging the little girl across the street at a rapid pace. Her daughter, she knew, was both curious and easily distracted. Left to her own devices, Tasa was perfectly capable of standing still right in the middle of the road — caught up in the study of an interesting pattern in the cracked and potholed cement or of some intriguing bit of graffiti on a nearby building. True, there were not many cars on the streets of La Courneuve at this hour, but few drivers here paid much attention to traffic laws or to pedestrian safety. In this lawless neighborhood, part of what the French called the Zone, hit-and-runs were a fairly common occurrence, certainly far more common than any police investigation of such “accidents.”

Almost as important to Nouria was her desire to keep moving — to avoid drawing unwanted attention from any of the predatory men who loitered along these dingy streets or squatted in the shadowed alleys. Six months ago, her husband had returned to his native Algeria on what he had told her was “family business.” And now he was dead, killed in a clash between the Algerian security forces and the Islamic rebels who periodically challenged that nation's authoritarian government. Word of his death had taken weeks to reach her, and she still did not know which of the two warring factions had murdered him.

That made Nouria Besseghir a widow — a widow whose French birth entitled her to a modest welfare allowance from the French government. In the eyes of the thieves, pimps, and rogues who essentially ran the affairs of the Cite des Quatre Milk, that small weekly stipend also made her a valuable commodity. Any one of them would be only too glad to offer her his dubious “protection”—at least in return for the chance to plunder her body and her money.

Her lip curled in disgust at the thought. Allah only knew that her dead husband, Hakkim, had been no great prize himself, but even so she would rather die than be fondled and then robbed by the human parasites she saw lurking all around her. And so Nouria walked quickly whenever and wherever she went outside her tiny apartment, and she always kept her gaze fixed firmly on the ground before her. Both she and her daughter also wore the hijab — the loose-fitting clothing, including head scarf, that marked them as Muslim females of decency and propriety.

“Mama, look!” Tasa exclaimed suddenly, pointing up into the blue sky above them. The little girl's voice was excited and shrill and piercing. “A big bird! Look at that big bird flying up there! It's enormous. Is it a condor? Or perhaps a roc? Like one from the stories? Oh, how Papa would have loved to have seen it!”

Annoyed, Nouria shushed her daughter sternly. The very last thing they needed to be right now was conspicuous. Still walking fast, she pulled on Tasa's wrist, tugging her along the littered pavement. It was too late.

A drunk with a matted beard and acne-pitted skin reeled out from a nearby alley, blocking their path. Nouria gagged as a choking stench of sour liquor and unwashed flesh rolled over her. After her first appalled look at this shambling wreck, she lowered her gaze and tried to walk around the man.

He staggered closer, forcing her to step back. The drunk, with his eyes bulging, coughed and spat and then moaned — uttering a low, guttural groan that was more dog-like than human.

Disgusted, Nouria grimaced and stepped back farther, pulling Tasa with her. Part of her ached that her beautiful little girl was being exposed to so much filth and degradation and depravity. Why, this cochon was so intoxicated that he could not even speak! She averted her eyes from the sight, wondering what she should do to get away from this stinking brute. Should she scoop Tasa up in her arms and make a dash back across the street? Or would that only draw even more unwanted attention?

'Mama!“ her daughter murmured. ”Something awful is happening to him. See? He's bleeding all over!"

Nouria looked up and saw with horror that Tasa was right. The drunk had collapsed in front of her, falling onto his hands and knees. Blood trickled onto the pavement, dripping from his mouth and from the terrible wounds spreading along the length of his arms and legs. Strips of flesh peeled away from his face and dropped to the ground, already turning into a reddish, translucent slime. He moaned again, quivering wildly as spasms of agony wracked his disintegrating body.

Stifling her own terrified screams, Nouria backed away from the dying man, putting her hand over her daughter's eyes to shield her from the gruesome sight. Hearing more anguished howls behind her, she whirled round. Many of the other men, women, and children who had also been out along the street were on their knees or curled up in agony-screaming, groaning, and clawing at themselves in a mindless, twitching frenzy. Dozens were already affected. And even as she watched, more and more fell prey to the invisible horror stalking their neighborhood.

For several seemingly endless seconds Nouria only stared at the hellish scene around her in mounting dread, scarcely able to comprehend the magnitude of the slaughter happening right before her panicked eyes. Then she gathered Tasa in her arms and ran, scrambling toward the nearest doorway in a frantic effort to find shelter.

But it was already far too late.

Nouria Besseghir felt the first burning waves of pain rippling outward from her heaving lungs, spreading with every breath through the rest of her body. Shrieking aloud in fear, she stumbled and fell — trying vainly to cushion her daughter against the impact with arms that were already disintegrating, shredding apart as skin and muscle tissue dissolved, pulling away from her bones.

More knives of fire stabbed at her eyes. Her vision blurred, dimmed, and then vanished. With the last traces of nerves remaining in what was left of her once-pretty face she felt something wet and soft sliding out of her eye sockets. She sank to the pavement, praying for oblivion, praying for a death that would stop the pain w racking every part of her flailing, shuddering body. She also prayed desperately for her daughter, hoping against hope that her little girl would be spared this same suffering.

But in the end, before the final darkness claimed her, she knew that even this last prayer had been denied.

“Mama,” she heard Tasa whimper. “Mama, it hurts… it hurts so much….”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Terce leaned back against one dark-paneled wall of Burke's small study. His posture was relaxed, almost casual, but his gaze was alert and focused. He still held the Beretta he had taken from the CIA officer. The 9mm pistol looked small in his large gloved right hand. He smiled coldly, sensing the growing unease of the two Americans sitting motionless under his watchful eye. Neither Hal Burke nor Kit Pierson was used to being wholly subject to the will of another. It amused Terce to keep these two senior intelligence officials so completely under his thumb.

He checked the small antique clock on Burke's desk. The last burst of gunfire outside had died away several minutes ago. By now, the spies his men were hunting should be dead. No matter how good their training was, no pair of FBI agents could possibly be a match for his own force of ex-commandos.

A voice crackled through his radio headset. “This is Uchida. I have a situation report.”

Terce straightened up, hiding his surprise. Uchida, a former Japanese airborne trooper, was one of the five men he had assigned to drive the two intruders into the ambush carefully laid along the north edge of Burke's farm. Any reports should have come from the ambush party itself. “Go ahead,” he replied.

He listened to the other man's tale of utter disaster in silence, keeping a tight rein on his rising anger. Four of his men were dead, including McRae, his best tracker and scout. The ambush he had planned had been rolled up from the flank and wiped out. That was bad enough. Worst of all was the news that the shocked survivors of his security team had completely lost contact with the retreating Americans. Hearing that his forces had found and disabled two automobiles belonging to the intruders was small consolation. By now they were undoubtedly in touch with their headquarters, reporting whatever they had heard and requesting urgent reinforcements.

“Should we pursue?” Uchida ended by asking.

“No,” Terce snapped. “Fall back on your vehicles and await my instructions.” He had been overconfident, and his team had paid a high price as a result. In the dark, the odds of regaining contact with the Americans before they received help were too low. And even in this open, unpopulated country the sound of so much gunfire was bound to draw unwelcome attention. It was time to leave this place before the FBI or other law-enforcement agencies could begin throwing a cordon around it.

“Trouble?” Kit Pierson asked icily. The dark-haired woman had detected the anger and uncertainty in his voice. She sat up straighter in the armchair.

A minor setback,“ Terce lied smoothly, working hard to conceal and control his growing irritation and impatience. All of his training and psychological conditioning had taught him the uselessness of the weaker emotions. He waved her back down using a small, almost imperceptible, gesture with the Beretta. ”Calm yourself, Ms. Pierson. All will be made clear in due time."

The second of the Horatii checked the desk clock again, mentally adjusting for the six-hour time difference between Virginia and Paris. The call would come soon, he thought. But would it come soon enough? Should he act without receiving specific orders? He pushed the thought away. His instructions were clear.

His secure cell phone buzzed abruptly. He answered it. “Yes?”

A voice on the other end, distorted faintly by encryption software and by multiple satellite relays, spoke calmly, issuing the command he had been waiting to hear. “Field Experiment Three has begun. You may proceed as planned.”

“Understood,” Terce said. “Out.”

Smiling slightly now, he looked across the room at the dark-haired FBI agent. “I hope you will accept my apology in advance, Ms. Pierson.”

She frowned, clearly puzzled. “Your apology? For what?”

Terce shrugged. “For this.” In one smooth motion, he lifted the pistol he had confiscated from Burke and squeezed the trigger twice. The first shot hit her in the middle of the forehead. The second tore straight through her heart. With a soft sigh, she slumped back against the blood-spattered back of the armchair. Her dead slate-gray eyes stared back at him, eternally fixed in an expression of utter astonishment.

“Good God!” Hal Burke gripped the arms of his chair. The blood drained from his face, leaving it a sickly hue. He pulled his horrified gaze away from the murdered woman, turning to the big man towering over him. “What… what the hell are you doing?” he stammered.

“Following my orders,” Terce told him simply.

“I never asked you to kill her!” the CIA officer shouted. He swallowed convulsively, plainly fighting down the urge to be sick.

“No, you did not,” the green-eyed man agreed. He placed the Beretta gently on the floor at his feet and pulled Kit Pierson's Smith & Wesson out of his pocket. He smiled again. "But then, you do not truly understand the situation, Mr. Burke. Your so-called TOCSIN was only a blind for a much larger operation, never a reality. And you are not the master here — only a servant. An expendable servant, alas."

Burke's eyes opened wide in sudden horrified understanding. He scrambled backward, trying desperately to stand up, to do something, anything, to fight back. He failed.

Terce fired three 9mm rounds into the CIA officer's stomach at point-blank range. Each bullet tore a huge hole through his back, spraying blood, bone fragments, and bits of internal organs across the swivel chair, desk, and computer screen behind him.

Burke fell back into his seat. His fingers scrabbled vainly at the terrible wounds in his abdomen. His mouth opened and closed like a netted fish gasping frantically for breath.

With contemptuous ease, Terce reached out with his foot and shoved the swivel chair over, spilling the dying CIA officer onto the hardwood floor. Then he strode over and dropped the Smith & Wesson in Kit Pier-son's blood-soaked lap.

When he turned around, he saw Burke lying motionless, curled inward on himself in his final death agony. The tall green-eyed man reached into his coat pocket and brought out a small plastic-wrapped package with a digital timer attached to the top. Moving swiftly, with practiced ease, he set the timer for twenty seconds, triggered it, and set the package on the desk — just below the racks of Burke's computer and communications equipment. The digital readout began counting down.

Terce stepped carefully around the CIA officer's body and out into the narrow hallway. Behind him, the timer hit zero. With a soft whoosh and a sudden white incandescent flash, the incendiary device he had planted detonated. Satisfied, he walked outside and pulled the front door closed behind him.

Then he turned. Flames were already visible through the nearly closed drapes of the study window, dancing and growing as they spread rapidly across the furniture, books, equipment, and bodies inside. He punched in a preset number on his cell phone and waited patiently for the reply.

“Make your report,” ordered the same calm voice he had heard earlier.

“Your instructions have been carried out,” Terce told him. “The Americans will find only smoke and ashes — and evidence of their own complicity. As ordered, my team and I are returning to the Center at once.”

Several thousand miles away, sitting in a cool, darkened room, the man called Lazarus smiled. “Very good,” he said gently. Then he swung back to watch the data streaming in from Paris.