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AIRBORNE

If there was one drawback to GPS targeting, Lieutenant Colonel Gordon had discovered soon enough, it was that the technology had become almost too automated. Simply put, delivering a GPS guided missile or bomb to its target was just too damn boring. Fly in, press a button, fly out. The truth was, a pilot on this type of mission was only there to “supervise” his instruments — on hand, so to speak, as a backup system in case something went wrong.

At least with laser-guided precision delivery Gordon would have been required to fly much lower, so that he could participate directly in the job of illuminating the target with a laser beam, right up to the moment when the bomb found its mark.

But when the NAVSTAR satellite positioning system was used for targeting, there was no need for the pilot to get involved. The bomb carried in the bay of Gordon’s F-117 didn’t need to be led by the nose to its target. At every stage of its descent it knew where it was and where it wanted to go. All he had to do was activate it, release it, and go home.

Where was the challenge in that?

At 9:40 A.M. “Firefly” used his onboard MAGR GPS receiver — supposedly accurate to within ten meters — to check his position with respect to time-of-flight coordinates, and discovered that he was only three hundred twenty kilometers from Mexico City instead of the expected three hundred seventy. A jet stream tail wind had put him slightly ahead of schedule. To confirm the GPS fix he powered up the multifunction display which pro­vided him with a full-color moving-map of the ground beneath the aircraft. The MFD was driven by an exceptionally accurate inertial navigation system based on a ring laser gyro. The digital map confirmed the GPS bearings. That meant if he took no corrective actions, his F-117 would be over the target at 9:57 A.M., three minutes earlier than planned.

Since he still needed clearance to deploy the bomb, Gordon decided to seek instructions over the secured radio circuit. His radio call sign for the mission was Greenbird.

“Aviary-One,” Gordon said thumbing his mike switch, “this is Green­bird. Ingress time is one seven minutes. Repeat, one seven. Acknowledge.”

Gordon glanced right, past the jagged edge of the window frame which had been serrated to reduce unwanted radar reflections. The right side of his aircraft was in shadow, allowing him to see straight down to a layer of snowy-white clouds six thousand meters below. They spread out like cotton balls in every direction, completely obscuring the ground from view.

A crackle in his earphones returned his attention to the inside of the aircraft.

“Greenbird, this is Aviary-One. Confirm your approach at minus one seven. Advise on visuals, over.”

“Negative on visuals. I’ve got cloud cover at eight thousand meters.”

Modern avionics had advanced to the point where you didn’t need to see the ground below you to know exactly what was there. But it was reassuring, nonetheless. In this case, where Gordon’s instruments told him that he had “drifted” ahead another fifty kilometers, it would have been nice to confirm it with a recognizable landmark — like, for instance, the city of San Luis Potosi over his right shoulder, which supposedly lay below the cloud layer seventy-five kilometers to the west. Perhaps the city was too far away to be clearly seen even without the clouds, but he would at least have been able to make out Mexican Highway 70 which, according to his moving-map display, was now directly beneath him.

This time he would have to rely on what his instruments told him was there.

Gordon thumbed his mike again. “What about Best Picture, Aviary-One? Any word yet?”

In one of the pockets of Gordon’s flight suit was a sealed envelope that had been handed to him before takeoff. It contained a launch code that he was required to match against one to be provided by the ground controller when the decision on whether to proceed with the mission was passed up. It was a method of ensuring the integrity of the final mission order. The phrase Best Picture translated roughly to, “Has the President made his decision yet?”

“Negative, Greenbird. We’re still waiting on that one. Over.”

Still waiting? Why the hell was it taking so long? Gordon wondered. With less than sixteen minutes to the target, surely someone ought to have made a decision by now.

“Roger that, Aviary-One. Just don’t forget about me. Out.”

Solano sensed that he was wearing the American party down. The longer the meeting went on, it seemed to him, the less sure of themselves Cole­man’s delegation had become.

Especially Stark. Whenever he thought Solano wasn’t looking, he’d sneak a glance at his watch, as though he had to be somewhere. Beads of sweat stood out from his forehead. They were visible to Solano even from across the room.

Mr. Stark, he thought, you would make a terrible poker player.

For several minutes now Coleman and Williams had tried to persuade Solano that his demands just weren’t reasonable. But despite their protes­tations he had remained firm — he would not give back their fancy war­planes unless he was richly compensated. He was convinced they would buckle. Finally his gamble paid off.

Coleman suddenly advanced to his side of the coffee table, which by then had acquired the status of a neutral zone. “All right. Agreed.”

Williams looked sharply at his boss. “What? You mean all fifty-four of them?”

The Secretary of State appeared shocked that Coleman had offered the complete one-for-one exchange of F-16s for F-22s. But he was nowhere near as surprised as Solano, who tried hard to look as though the outcome had been inevitable all along. The truth was, he would have gladly settled for two-thirds the number of planes. To his way of thinking, the American F-16s were far more prestigious, more legitimate, than the Chinese Su-27s.

Before he could offer Coleman his hand to seal the agreement someone knocked at the door.

“You were expecting someone?” Solano quipped sarcastically, unable to conceal the euphoria of his victory.

Flustered, Stark crossed the room and opened the door. Somebody’s head appeared in the doorway. It was Solano’s administrative aid, who looked quickly around the room. Embarrassed by the unexpected intrusion, Solano snapped at his aide in Spanish, demanding to know what was so important that it couldn’t wait another fifteen minutes.

His aide nodded toward the hall and retreated from the room.

Solano smiled dutifully at the President.

“My apologies, gentlemen. I shall be but one moment.”

With his cheeks flushing, Solano nodded to Coleman and walked quickly from the room.

When the door clicked shut Coleman saw Williams turn in his direction.

“Where are you going to get — ”

Coleman grimaced and waved his hand, signaling his lack of interest for the logistics of the proposed agreement. “We’ll let Scott figure it out, and deal with the Congressional backlash later.” He already knew that he had proposed a settlement whose terms Congress would strongly oppose. But he didn’t have the time to worry about that now. “As far as I’m con­cerned, the faster we close this deal, the better. For the time being he can have his lousy F-16s…”

Stark nodded vigorously. “He’s right. He’s right. When he comes back let’s just finalize this thing.” Moving back across the room, he picked up the briefcase and set it down on a bureau near the window. He flicked it open.

The briefcase contained a cellular phone physically connected by a thin cord to a scrambling device provided by an NSA technical team. The NSA claimed the coding software could not be broken. Stark lifted the phone and dialed the number of the Commander in Charge at Holloman Air Force Base. He ran the cord through a slot, closed the briefcase, and car­ried it across the room to the President.

“Here,” he said, holding out the phone, still attached to the briefcase by the cord. “It’s not too late to bring it back.”

Coleman stared at the closed door, mulling it over.

“No, Leon,” he finally announced. “I think we’ll hold off on that a few more minutes.”

“I don’t understand,” the aide said. “Who is this Velarde?”

Solano grabbed the man’s arm and led him off to one side, away from the two Secret Service agents and his own six-member team of body­guards — all of whom were standing about in the hall outside the meeting room.

“Do me a favor and do not repeat that name. Understood? What does he look like?” Solano knew full well that it could not be Velarde who wished to speak with him. Velarde was dead. He’d even seen news cover­age of the body being removed from the San Diego gymnasium where Velarde had taken Montoya before trying to extort more money from him. Solano had no reason to doubt the official FBI announcement that they had recovered the bodies of every gunman involved in the assassination attempt.

Solano’s team of secret mercenaries was dead. All of them, including Velarde. Had the double-crossing low life somehow survived, Solano knew, he’d have heard from the greedy bastard before now. And if he was dead, then who was the impostor who’d borrowed his name? And what did he mean when he said he had a message from C.M.? Was Solano really supposed to believe that Camilla Montoya was still alive? If so, where had she been these last three days?

“They’re holding him at the elevator,” Solano’s aide informed him. “Shall I have him — ”

“No.”

Solano motioned for two of his bodyguards to join him. “I’ll see to him myself.”

The aide tilted his head in the direction of the meeting room. “What about…”

“Make up an excuse.”

“Such as?”

Solano was suddenly angered by his aide’s lack of initiative. “I don’t know!” he shrugged, turning to go. “Tell them I went to have a piss!”

“I certainly will!” Montoya insisted. “I’ll break his scrawny neck the min­ute I get my hands on him!”

“That’s not what I meant,” Kirby told her. “I meant you won’t get the chance.”

He tried explaining to her again that they had no way of knowing for sure that she had not been infected over the course of the last forty-eight hours. Until they did know, the only sensible thing was to keep her away from anyone who might be susceptible to Anders’ tiny creation. “Even if it’s someone you’re not particularly crazy about.”

Montoya shook off Kirby’s warning. “I feel fine!” she assured him. “Really. I’ve never been sick in my life.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s just make sure we don’t find out the hard way. OK?”

“What’s that for?” she said, watching with suspicion as he held up a large white handkerchief and proceeded to shake it free of its neatly pressed folds.

He placed it on his lap and began tying together two adjacent corners in a knot.

“Ever worn a surgical mask before?”

“I’m not putting that thing on my face!”

They had been inside the city of Phoenix for the last ten minutes. The hotel was only a couple of blocks away. But unless Montoya took this one basic precaution, Kirby had no intention of letting her out of the car. “Ma’am,” he said. “I’ve got two kids to think about. If it was up to me, I’d quarantine you for a month.”

Montoya’s eyes darted across to Cassie.

“Of course,” he said, going onto the next knot, “even this would be a complete waste of time if some government fool thought we could get away with using biological agents to resolve disputes with our neighbors.”

Kirby had become increasingly worried about just how well-connected Anders had been in Washington. Certainly he had friends at the Pentagon. Powerful friends. How else to explain what had been accomplished back there in the desert? More importantly, did that influence extend into the White House? And what if it did? Could that affect the outcome of the meeting here in Phoenix? Kirby wondered. Doubtless Coleman and the new Mexican president could hardly be on good terms. And yet they had agreed to meet, face to face. Evidently the two men were under pressure to reach some sort of compromise on the matter of the oil wells Solano had seized. The American team would be focusing hard on securing the release of the hostages — American and international. What worried Kirby was whether Coleman had carried any knowledge of BDM750A into the meeting — and if he did, just how important was it to the outcome? And what if the two parties failed to reach accord? The U.S. would not accept defeat lightly, especially from a regime founded on an illegal coup.

Still, Kirby didn’t believe the administration would ever be crazy enough to attempt the subversion of a neighboring government using germ warfare — whether it be a legitimate ruling party or not. Nonetheless, he could not be certain of this. “Therefore,” he told Montoya, “you’re going to have to make sure that’s not an option, even if it is a remote one.”

He finished tying the handkerchief and handed it to Montoya. Frown­ing, she took it from him.

At the end of the hall Solano turned right and came to an immediate stop. He was taken aback by the immense size of the man claiming to be Velarde. Compared to Solano’s slight build, he was gigantic. The two Secret Service men had him under close surveillance at the elevator, their weapons trained in his direction.

Two of Solano’s own bodyguards had accompanied their principal down the hall. He turned and pushed them back around the corner, step­ping out of view.

“Give me your gun,” he told one of them.

His order was rapidly obeyed and he tucked the weapon inside his belt, buttoning his jacket over the top of it. This done, he sent his men off. Again he advanced around the corner.

“I understand you wanted to talk to me?”

The man who so clearly was not Velarde regarded Solano for a moment, turning one large eye toward him. Without saying a word, he tilted his head at his custodians.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Solano said. “I’m sure we can handle it from here.”

The two Secret Service agents looked at each other doubtfully.

“Really. Thank you, Agent, ah…”

“Gallagher, Mr. President.”

“Gallagher,” Solano repeated. He looked around the hall. “Mr. Gal­lagher. Is there somewhere private where I can speak to my, uh…” He gestured to their visitor.

“No, sir. I’m afraid not. You’re going to have to take your message right here.”

Solano feigned astonishment at hearing his request turned down. But Gallagher was adamant. Solano’s unannounced courier was staying where the two agents could keep an eye on him.

The President exhaled noisily. “Then I will take my message over by the window. Hmmm?”

Gallagher considered it for a moment and turned to look at the courier, now closely monitored by the agent wielding the submachine gun. “Just so you know,” he warned. “If you so much as breathe in a threatening way, we’ll take your head off. You got that?”

“I’m sure you’d leap at the chance,” their charge mumbled facetiously.

Gallagher shook his head in disgust and stepped aside.

“You,” Solano said moving off to the window. “Come with me.”

The two men walked side by side away from the elevator area. Gallagher and his partner were forced to watch from a distance.

“Who the hell are you?” Solano said in a low voice, his eyes trained on the window ahead of them.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“You said your name was, what, Velarde?”

Anders laughed. “I know this must be somewhat annoying for you. Hell, if I were in your position I’d be annoyed too.” They reached the window, and Anders caught Solano looking across at him out of the corner of his eye. “I mean, there you are, probably in the most important meeting of your life. You have the full attention of no less than the very President of the United States. Of course, I can only imagine, but it must feel pretty good, right?” Anders nodded to emphasize Solano’s new status in the world. “You’ve got something he wants, he’s paying you the due respect you deserve. For once, things seem to be working out your way… In fact, ever since you arranged to have your former boss relieved of her position, things have really been working out rather — ”

Solano turned to leave. “You stupid fuck. I don’t have to — ”

“She’s still alive, you know.”

It was enough to halt Solano in mid stride. He turned back to the window.

“As I was saying… It must be incredibly annoying for you to be hauled away from such an important meeting by someone you know has been dead for three days. And I assure you, your Mr. Velarde was quite dead the last time I saw him.”

“Who’s still alive?”

“Why, Camilla, of course. Thanks to me. Though one could argue that you also deserve a little of the credit for her good fortune.” Anders gave Solano a half-smile. “I swear. I really think the guy would have killed her, if you’d only paid him enough. He had that look in his eyes. Like he meant business. Oh — I think he would have done it, all right.”

Anders was making use of the little he knew about Solano’s involve­ment in Montoya’s abduction, most of which he had got directly from her when she accused him of being an accomplice to the scheme. He’d never got the chance to explain how wrong she had been.

He could see his taunts were having an affect on Solano. The Mexican President closed his eyes. “What do you want?”

“I came to tell you that she wants her job back.”

Solano opened his eyes and looked at Anders. “She’s had three days to do that. What’s stopping her?”

“Just me.”

“And why — if what you say is true — would you be doing that?”

“Oh, it’s true all right, Sergio, my friend. All I have to do is walk out of here, make an anonymous phone call, and the FBI can go pick her up ten minutes from now. If I should decide that’s what I want to do. On the other hand…”

“Let me guess. On the other hand you could be persuaded to complete the job that these fanatics botched, if only I make it worth your while?”

Anders shifted his head to one side, as though considering the proposi­tion for the first time.

“How much?” Solano asked.

“It’s not about money.”

The President casually checked that they were still out of hearing range of Coleman’s men. “Then what?”

It was simple, Anders told him. All he had to do was withdraw from his meeting with Coleman and go home. If he did that without negotiating a single U.S. concession, the unfinished “job” would be taken care of within a week.

“I want it done by tomorrow.”

“A week. I need to be certain you keep your word.”

Solano considered this. “What’s in it for you?”

Anders shook his head. “It’s not something you need to know.”

“And after one week?”

“She’ll no longer be a problem, and you do as you please.”

Solano stared down through the window at the road as he thought it over. He had seemed skeptical that Anders was not asking for more.

“Remember,” Anders repeated. “No deals. That means no hostage negotiations, no transactions involving military aircraft.”

Solano looked up at him sharply. “Aircraft?”

“Unless you want her released.”

Anders couldn’t be sure what it was he said, but suddenly Solano looked more content with the situation. It was as though something had “clicked,” and he nodded to himself, a smile building on his face.

“You’re with the Embassy,” he said, continuing to nod. “Very clever…”

Embassy? Anders wondered what Solano was talking about. But he was shrewd enough to hide his confusion. His face remained impassive. He did not so much as blink at the other man. Instead he looked out through the glass at the building opposite them. He watched as one Secret Service agent on the roof across from them lifted a long tube-like object onto his shoulder and scanned the street below through a viewfinder. Anders realized that he was looking at a missile launcher.

“Fine,” Solano whispered, although he was clearly agitated. “You can tell them that we’ll play it their way. One week. But I still want my Su-27s. And this time you had better make sure she is out of my life for good. Understood?”

Su-27s? Anders nodded anyway.

“Relax,” he said. “You’re almost home free.”

“It’s a quarter to,” Stark fretted. He opened the door and put his head into the hall.

Solano’s aide greeted him with a shrug.

“What’s he playing at?” Stark said shutting the door again.

“He’s trying to make us sweat, no doubt,” Williams said.

“Unfortunately, he’s doing a fantastic job.”

“Calm down,” Coleman said from his spot at the window. He was gazing down at the TV crews. The light outside had faded, and drops of water were appearing on the glass. “If he isn’t back in sixty seconds then you go find him and haul his ass back — ”

The door opened and Solano advanced three steps into the room. He had an impatient look about him. The way he stared at them… Stark felt a knot forming in his stomach.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” Solano announced mechanically. “It seems I have a personal emergency at home requiring immediate attention. I’m afraid I’m going to have to conclude our business for the day.”

Stark looked across at the President.

“That’s too bad,” Coleman said. “Fortunately, I think we were finished for the day anyway. I’ll arrange for someone to work out the details of the agreement with your — ”

“No, no,” Solano interrupted him, holding up a hand. “You don’t understand. I’m afraid our negotiations are going to have to wait.”

“What?”

The President moved toward Solano. “What the hell for?” he said with scarcely concealed anger. “I thought we had a deal?”

“Wait how long?” Williams asked.

Solano checked his watch in full view of them.

“Unfortunately, I must leave immediately,” he said, bypassing Wil­liams’ question entirely.

“Mr. President,” Coleman said restraining himself. “In case there’s some confusion here… Please understand that I did not make you a stand­ing offer just now. The terms of today’s negotiations will not apply either tomorrow or the next day. If you want your damned aircraft, then there’s only one time to cut this deal. And that’s right now.”

Solano was unmoved.

“Before I go, gentlemen. The safety of your countrymen in the Cam­peche Bay is naturally of paramount importance to my government. And we shall do our best to keep it that way. Of course, it would be irresponsi­ble of me to assure their continued health and well-being if you should feel compelled to try something foolish that endangers not only their lives, but those of my people as well. Therefore, I trust you will exercise the due restraint… Gentlemen.”

Solano nodded and disappeared from the room.

In a last desperate attempt to reverse the course of events, Stark bolted toward the door. “We still have the tape!” he shouted uselessly down the hall. He knew his threat was an idle one, and he instantly regretted his outburst. It was as though a panicked other-self had taken possession. When he came back into the room, he was trembling.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “What happened?”

The President ground his teeth. “What happened is that we just got screwed.”

Williams crossed the room and closed the door. “What now?” he said, somewhat rhetorically.

“We grill the son-of-a-bitch! That’s what.”

“Oh shit,” Stark said softly. As he dwelled on the consequences of their failed meeting he repeated the phrase over and over.

“Will you shut up!” Coleman yelled at him. “Give me the phone. And if that press statement isn’t ready yet, it damn well better be two minutes from now.”

While Stark popped open the briefcase, Williams fished around in his pocket for the alpha-numeric sequence Thornton had handed him in Washington. He glanced briefly at the launch code. Printed on embossed plastic in bold blue capitalized lettering, and utterly devoid of meaning, it read: JTX38P37L. “Here,” he said, offering it to the President. “You’ll need this.”

Coleman took the playing card-sized piece of white vinyl from Wil­liams and turned it over in his fingers while Stark dialed the number.

“Is this really necessary?” he asked, displaying the launch code to Williams. “I mean, if our phones are so goddamn impenetrable, what do we need secret codes for these days?”

Williams pointed out that their communication line to Holloman — from Holloman the communication went by an encrypted radio link to the F-117 pilot — was only as secure as the men who operated it. It was no secret that encryption codes had been compromised for profit in the past by govern­ment agents who thought no one was looking over their shoulder. There­fore, when the President was involved directly in the decision-making loop, it didn’t hurt to take secondary precautions. Thornton himself had selected the random sequence, stamped it personally in his office, and destroyed the mold before handing one copy to Williams, the other to a trusted courier who flew to Holloman in the middle of the night and hand-delivered it to the mission pilot in a sealed envelope. It was a simple but effective way to verify that the order passed to the pilot at the last minute did indeed originate with the President. Even if the security of either com­munication line could be breached — by someone impersonating the Presi­dent, say — getting the launch code right would be next to impossible. With the sequence comprised of nine alphanumeric characters, Thornton had been able to choose a launch code from over 100 trillion possible unique combinations.

“Chief,” Stark said nervously handing the phone to Coleman. “Holloman’s patching you through now.”

“Standby, Greenbird,” Lieutenant Colonel Gordon was told. “The next voice you hear will be that of TOP DOG. Be ready to verify. Over.”

Gordon felt a surge of adrenaline as he acknowledged the transmission. “Roger that. Standing by.”

TOP DOG was the mission name for the President, a fact which put the fear of God into Hank Gordon, lest he screw up under the direct command of the Commander in Chief himself. Despite knowing next to nothing about the nature of the bomb which he had now ferried to within eighty-eight kilometers of the drop point, Gordon had no doubt its purpose was closely linked to the U.S. crisis in the Mexican Gulf. In his own mind, Gordon believed his mission to be part of an overall strategy to secure the release of the captive oil workers, and for this reason he was especially concerned that his part in it should go off without a hitch. Undoubtedly, many lives depended on him doing his job correctly.

Gordon located the envelope stashed in his flight suit and pulled it out. He tore through the presidential seal bearing the White House logo and read the contents:

The transmitter crackled and a voice Gordon recognized came on the radio.

“Who am I talking to?” the President asked. He sounded irritable.

“Sir,” Gordon said. “This is Greenbird. Believe I’m the man you’re after, sir.”

“Greenbird? Just one moment…”

Gordon strained to hear what followed next. It sounded as though the President was conferring with someone in the background, but the trans­mission was indistinct. Then the terrifying thought crossed his mind that it was he who was being spoken to, and that he had missed receiving vital information. A heavy sweat broke out on his back.

“TOP DOG. I’m not receiving you, sir. Say again please!”

“All right,” the President said coming back on the line. “Listen up, Greenbird. Your orders are to proceed as planned. You are to deliver your cargo. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. Execute mission plan and make delivery. Confirmed. Can I have the verification code, sir?”

“…here it is.” Coleman read off the nine-character sequence.

Gordon nodded to himself.

“Thank you, TOP DOG. You are verified.”

After being allowed to leave the floor peacefully — he was escorted by Gallagher to the lobby almost immediately after conferring with Solano — Anders took the elevator back to the fourth floor and approached room 405 for the second time. It was now thirteen minutes to ten.

Unless he could find another way out of the hotel, he would still have to get past the remaining security guard in the lobby. The young guard would be wondering what had happened to his partner, and unlikely to let Anders by him so readily. Therefore Anders needed to be prepared. He took the hotel keys from his pocket, selected the master key for the rooms, and let himself into 405. Fortunately, it seemed no one had been in the room since he’d left twenty minutes earlier. The guard was still lying on the floor and the place reeked from the puddle of fresh vomit on the carpet. The semi-automatic was on the bed where Anders had left it. He picked up the Beretta and threw it in the medical bag. Then he took the bag and left the room, locking the door behind him.

As he was heading back down the hall he saw someone step out from the elevator.

“Hey, you!”

The person calling out to him was the security guard from the lobby. Anders turned away from him and began walking in the opposite direction. He heard the guard break into a run behind him.

“I want to speak with you, mister!”

Anders increased his pace. A moment later he was leaving the guard behind as he sprinted for the stairway at the end of the corridor.

His head was spinning.

Perhaps, he thought, if I rest for just a moment…

But another voice inside him would not allow it. So close, it said to him. You are so close. Don’t stop now. Keep moving!

Anders picked himself up from the wall that he was leaning against. He had lost the guard somewhere in the windings of the hotel between the fourth floor and the first. But at a price. His strength was rapidly leaving him.

With a trembling hand he gripped the handle of the stairwell door. He opened it a little. On the other side was the lobby. The hubbub from the journalists out on the pavement was now much louder than it had been earlier. Something was going on. As he watched from the doorway the muted noise grew louder still.

Solano and his small contingent of bodyguards suddenly appeared in the lobby. They marched across the floor and stopped in front of the glass doors leading out to the street. This caused a flurry of movement outside — still photographers pressed themselves to the glass, briefly illuminating the interior of the lobby with the staggered light of a dozen flashing cameras. Solano and his men soon discovered that they were locked inside the building. The guard who had left to find his partner had secured the entrance. The group lingered there for several seconds, until one of Solano’s men was dispatched to find someone to let them out. Anders looked past the group. In comparison to the yellow warmth of the lobby, the street was a dull veil of cold gray. Rain drizzled down over the heads of the reporters as they waited for Solano to emerge. Soon the bodyguard returned with a hotel employee carrying a set of keys.

“Remember,” Anders overheard Solano tell his men in Spanish. “I don’t want to talk to anyone. Get me to the car.”

The front door was opened and Solano disappeared through it into the waiting crowd. Seconds later Anders followed him out onto the pavement. It was wet and slippery. Tiny wind-whipped raindrops floated sideways through the air, stinging the faces of those gathered on the street. Solano’s bodyguards were forced to squint, their darting eyes moving over the crowd as they hustled their boss away from the hotel. One produced a small umbrella which he held over the President’s head.

“Mr. President!” someone shouted up ahead. “Do you feel personally responsible for the death of Captain Kristin Miller?”

Solano ignored the question as he and his men made their way toward, and then through, a traffic barricade erected nearby on the street. The two green Navigators that Anders had first spotted out at the Arco Training Center were parked on the other side, near the southeast corner of the hotel. Reporters scrambled beneath the wooden barricades to keep up with Solano, some of them sliding on the wet concrete as they went through.

“What about the hostages?” someone else yelled. “When will they be coming home? Mr. President, what happened in the meeting?”

Solano walked on without uttering a word, his head fixed in the direc­tion of the cars.

The reporters soon sensed that they were wasting their time and many began to lag behind. One by one they turned away. Only a handful of diehard TV-news correspondents continued the pursuit. But their efforts went unrewarded, and soon the camera lenses were drooping toward the pavement as they gradually gave up the chase.

Anders watched the scene from the edge of the crowd where, in con­trast to their earlier behavior, the media now showed not the slightest interest in him.

The most persistent of the TV crews to chase Solano was the CNN team. It was led by a sophisticated-looking young woman in an aggressive red blazer — a color consistent with her known reporting style. She walked backwards behind the Mexican leader’s entourage while giving her report into a following camera.

“As to what transpired in his meeting with President Coleman only minutes ago,” she told her audience with an air of detachment, “the former Attorney General of Mexico, and recently self-proclaimed President of his country, is refusing to say.”

She kept her eyes fixed on the camera as Solano’s party filled the background.

“This behavior, of course, contrasts sharply with that of his predeces­sor, Camilla Montoya, whose striking media presence was said to have raised the readership of The Reforma by a full fifty percent during her first year in office…”

Upon hearing her comment, Solano glanced back to see who was undermining his own media presence.

“Although FBI officials are refusing to rule out the possibility that the most famous ‘cat’ in Mexican history may still turn up alive, every day that passes now without news of her only increases the likelihood that such a statement will eventually be made. If so, the media in particular will mourn her passing. Perhaps doubly so — because it seems that when she went, the proverbial feline somehow managed to make off with the new leader’s tongue…”

That was enough for Solano. In a burst of fury he turned and pushed his bodyguards aside. The CNN reporter remained blissfully unaware of the goading effect her words had on the now infuriated leader — until she backed straight into him. Before she could turn around to see who it was, he shoved her from behind. Suddenly off-balance, it was only a moment before her feet slipped on the concrete and she fell face down on the edge of the gutter. She yelped in surprise as her body twisted awkwardly onto the road.

“Stupid woman!” Solano hissed.

Instantly the crowd surged back in his direction, jeering at him and rushing to the aid of the fallen CNN correspondent. The Mexican Presi­dent stared defiantly at them as his men instinctively closed around him again for protection.

From the spot where she lay in the street — with the lower part of one leg damming the flow of rainwater in the gutter — the reporter’s first con­cern was whether or not the cameraman had caught the incident on tape. Then she howled in pain, proclaimed loudly that “the jerk” had broken her arm, and screamed for someone to call an ambulance.

Had Anders been conscious of the bag he was carrying, he would probably have turned and quickly walked away before anyone singled him out as a doctor. As it was, something else happened next which distracted the crowd before they had a chance to notice him again. A speeding car appeared from the west end of the street. A maroon-colored Jaguar. It attracted a good deal of attention, especially when it skidded noisily while attempting to stop on the other side of the barricade. Then, as if to under­score the urgency of its arrival, one of the rear doors popped open before the car had even come to rest.

Kirby was so preoccupied with the scene in the street, that Montoya was already out of the car before he was aware she was moving. A moment later the rest of them were following her. But Montoya was well across the road before they had even set foot outside the car.

Nobody on the other side of the road who saw her coming bothered to step aside to let her through. It occurred to Kirby that none of them had any idea who she was, or what it was that she was yelling in Spanish as she forced her way through them. The makeshift mask she wore disguised her identity. Yet Montoya seemed oblivious to this, emerging seconds later on the far side of a large arc of journalists which had formed around Solano’s party. Only then did Kirby catch a glimpse of a woman lying on the road. She was propped up on one elbow and howling while two stooping men — journalists it appeared — tried to help her.

The media corps hung back cautiously from the human shield that had formed about the Mexican leader. Several meters separated the two groups. At first they eyed each other. But the arrival of the stranger among them quickly drew their attention. An audible murmur could be heard from the crowd as Montoya walked directly up to the ring of bodyguards. The two closest of Solano’s men both put up an arm to keep her at bay.

Kirby pulled Cassie through the crowd by the hand. Rawley and Parker were close by. The four arrived in time to hear Montoya yelling at Solano’s men in Spanish.

“What’s she saying?” Parker said.

“I don’t know,” a person nearby replied. “But she’ll end up with more than a broken arm if she doesn’t watch herself.”

Raising his voice so that the crowd around him could hear, Rawley translated. “She told them to move their fat asses, or she’ll do it for them.”

Solano’s men looked hard at Montoya, their faces betraying an almost certain recognition that the crowd had not yet made. The bodyguards exchanged nervous glances among one other. Even Solano’s eyes grew wide with fear as he craned his neck to get a look at the stranger.

Impatiently, Montoya pulled at the cloth around her lower face. It came away and she tossed it to the pavement. Her action had the intended effect. At once the imposing figures who had been hiding Solano stepped out of her way. They all looked as if they had seen a ghost. However, no one else in the crowd seemed to recognize the small but commanding presence among them. It was the first time that she had been seen in public without one of the turban-like hats which so defined her image.

Solano’s face paled. He appeared transfixed as he stared at her.

“Camilla…” he said. After a moment’s hesitation he added woodenly, “Thank God. You’re all right.”

The CNN reporter in the gutter seemed to forget about her pain. She stared incredulously from the ground. “Montoya?”

Word of the identity of the woman — who most had not yet managed to get a good look at — spread rapidly through the crowd. Suddenly everyone had to get closer. An intense lobbying for position broke out. The journal­ists stampeded forward, rolling over the top of their injured colleague, and stopping only a meter or so short of where the two Mexican presidents now faced off with each other.

Solano tried to smile for the cameras, now carried high above the crowd on the outstretched arms of photo-journalists and TV crews. Kirby was separated from Cassie when the crowd surged forward, but he relaxed when he spotted her near Rawley and Parker seconds later.

Nobody from the media knew what was going on — and in the strain to find out, it showed on their faces.

Despite her initial verbal assault on his men, Montoya had not said a word since laying eyes on Solano himself. She just stood there, rigid, her fists clenched at her sides. And suddenly it was quiet in the street again, as people stilled themselves to listen.

The rain whipped softly at her face, stinging her skin. For days Montoya had dreamed of this moment, and now it was here. How she had wanted to squash him in front of the world!

Yet she hesitated.

It wasn’t that she feared him. Nor was it because she felt even the slightest compassion for the man. No. Mercy had never been a part of her. She was seized momentarily by a perverse sense of curiosity. She could not help but wonder how Solano would try to wheedle himself out of his current predicament. Oh, the little insect. How she wanted to see him squirm.

Solano stared at her, blinking with uncertainty. To her surprise, he looked past her, over the heads of the crowd — as though searching for someone. His eyes flitted about the street, then returned to her.

Cautiously, he advanced toward her. “We all thought… I mean… How did you manage to…” He nodded dumbly. “Why, this is fantastic!”

All at once the press threw a barrage of questions at Montoya. Solano tried to use this to his advantage. Instead of making his way to her side, he attempted to retreat, leaving her the focus of attention. But before he had a chance to do so, Montoya stepped forward and landed a resounding slap to the side of his face. The crowd looked almost as shocked as Solano, who did his best to appear completely at a loss to explain her behavior.

“I haven’t finished with you,” she told him.

“Someone get her to the car,” Solano commanded his men. “She’s hysterical!”

His bodyguards were hesitant, each of them waiting for another to take the initiative. No one moved.

“Do as I say!” Solano yelled.

No response. His men remained motionless, their eyes cast toward the ground as he stared at them. Someone yelled out to Montoya, asking whether she knew who had been behind the attempt on her life.

“Of course I know who was responsible!” she spluttered. “I’m looking at him.”

“Camilla?” Solano said protesting his innocence. “What are you saying?”

“I am saying, you imbecile, that if you wanted me dead you should have seen to it yourself, not pay to have your… your… payasos do it for you!” She shook her head disdainfully. “But then we both know it would take a man to do that. Not a worm like you.” Montoya turned for the benefit of the TV cameras. “Which is fortunate for Sergio, because if he had a single bone in his body I’d have had it ground up and made into a spit-bowl by now.”

Nervous laughter from several nearby journalists and TV reporters confirmed Montoya’s belief that they were delighted to see her back. Yet, still they feared her. She drew comfort from this as she turned again to look at Solano, whose face had grown red. The veins in his forehead stood out visibly across his brow. He was trembling with rage. He looked as though he was about to explode.

“God,” Montoya said with the most unsavory look she could muster. “It’s raining, and here you are sweating like a pig under your umbrella.” She turned away from him and started moving back through the crowd, toward the hotel. “Somebody wipe his forehead. He’s an embarrassment to the clod of earth he crawled out from.”

For the time being she was finished with Solano. She could deal with him later. “Now,” she announced loudly to the media. “I believe I’m late for a meeting with your Mr. Coleman.”

“You damn bitch!”

Montoya looked behind her and saw Solano unbuttoning his jacket. He pulled something from the waistband of his trousers.

“He’s got a gun!” someone shouted.

This disclosure terrified those who heard it, sending most of the people around her diving for cover. Yet instead of doing the same, Montoya watched helplessly — caught like a rabbit in the headlights of an approach­ing truck. All she could think was, Where did he get that?

Things happened quickly. She caught pieces of what Solano was saying as he leveled the gun at her, “… were so right… done it myself long ago…”

The face of somebody close-by appeared in front of her as the first shot rang out. At the same time, Montoya felt the crushing weight of a man’s body coming down hard on her. Another shot. People screaming.

Then faces above her.

Montoya didn’t know if she had been hit or not. But she was scared. For the first time in her life she was truly scared.

“Get an ambulance!” she heard someone cry out. The voice was famil­iar. But who’s? She was confused. Who’s face was that above her? She tried to focus on it.

Dr. Kirby, she thought.

“Richard,” someone else said. “He’s been hit!”

Who?

Montoya heard a groan as someone was rolled off her. She twisted to see his face. It was Rawley. He looked completely shocked, yet insisted the bullets had missed him. However, a large damp patch beneath the right arm of his jacket suggested otherwise. Cassie was applying pressure to the wound to stop the bleeding. A short distance away Solano was pinned to the road beneath the men who had sworn to protect him. He was bleeding from the face.

Montoya saw Kirby lean in over her. “Are you — ”

“I’m fine.”

Montoya struggled to her feet, assisted by Parker who also did her best to keep the photographers at bay. Further down the street people were shouting that the “President” had been shot. No one had waited to see whether in fact it was true, and the first reports to go out stated that at least one of Solano’s bullets had found their mark.

“Not unless he was purposely aiming at me,” Rawley later remarked. “In which case, he was an awfully good shot if you think about it…”

Montoya was stunned. That Rawley had thrown himself into the path of a bullet and quite possibly saved her life left her feeling quite… awkward. How else could she describe it? For the first time in the presence of any other person she actually felt graceless. He had barely even known her.

“What were you thinking?” she asked him in genuine wonder.

“Thinking?” Rawley shook his head. “Hell. I just ran in the wrong direction. That’s all.”

Montoya looked at Cassie. “Will he be…”

“I don’t know. But it could have been a lot worse.” Despite all the blood Rawley had lost, Cassie said she thought it was probably not a seri­ous injury.

Montoya searched for the right words. “Mr. Rawley, I…”

“You’re welcome.”

“You big lug,” Parker said.

Montoya nodded.

Barely forty seconds had passed since Solano had discharged the gun, the second shot into the air as he had been tackled by his bodyguards. Two Secret Service agents arrived next, trudging through the shallow puddles of water building on the pavement. They found Montoya shaken but other­wise all right. They asked if they could be of assistance.

They certainly could be, she told them.

“The Lady has a meeting with the President to get to,” Rawley told them. Montoya looked at him. “Hey,” he said. “We didn’t come all this way for nothing!”

He waved her off. “Go.”

The rain was picking up now. Yet few of those gathered on the street seemed unduly bothered by it. The shooting had made them forget their discomfort. For the briefest moment, he entertained the idea of trying to get to her himself. But, with the throng of reporters surrounding her, it was an unlikely prospect. Anders let the thought pass, ducking instead from sight as Montoya and her escorts came in his direction.

He had seen all of it. Solano’s public humiliation. The shooting. And especially the incredibly annoying behavior of Kirby’s friend from the CDC — if that was really where the man had come from. Anders doubted it. One did not instinctively throw oneself in the line of fire like that. Espe­cially not a scientist. Even the army technicians he’d got to know would probably have peed in their pants if they’d seen a gun pointed in their direction.

But for that one act of misplaced heroism Anders might have slipped away with the knowledge that Montoya was out of the picture and that Solano had effectively hung himself. Certainly it was not something he could have planned for. Nonetheless, he felt cheated by the way things had turned out. Now she was free to upset the predetermined sequence of events that her unwitting usurper had set in motion.

Anders cursed Rawley. He cursed Montoya. And most of all he cursed himself for not having taken care of her when he’d had the chance. Only his stupid ego had kept her alive in the first place. And for what? To derive some perverse pleasure in sharing with her his final victory? What did that matter, if by trying to do so he had planted the seeds of his own undoing? Now she swept past him and headed inside the hotel, her presence threat­ening to disrupt the delicate chain of events set to take place above Mex­ico’s capital at 10:00 A.M., in just seven minutes time. In all likelihood her arrival had come too late to change a thing. But he wasn’t about to chance it.

The street around him was alive with people rushing back and forth in the rain, most of them reporters attempting to file their stories. Anders looked up at the roof of the building across the street. Sure enough, he could just make out the pair of agents he’d seen from the top floor of the Marriott. Their gray silhouetted heads rimmed the roof-line as they sur­veyed the activity below, their sole concern the protection of the Com­mander-in-Chief.

Yes, he could manage it, he thought. The pity was, he almost liked Coleman — it seemed the man shared the same abhorrence for the Mexican leader as did he. They were allies of a sort. As for Montoya, he despised her simply because she represented the sum total of that wretched country. Of course, it didn’t help that she had profited from the wave of political empowerment that swept Mexican women into government in the eight­ies — a swell of la feminista initiated by the same economic crisis that had claimed the life of his father. The thought alone was enough to make him clench his jaw. Without hesitation Anders opened the bag and took out the gun, tucking it into his belt. Then he threw the bag aside and ran across the road toward the entrance of the building, his feet splashing through the pools of water on the ground.

Yes. He knew what he needed to do.

“Stop wriggling.”

“No offense,” Rawley said looking up at Cassie. “But do you know what you’re doing?”

She applied more pressure.

“Oww!”

“Don’t worry. I am a doctor. Although I’ll admit I’ve never treated a gunshot wound before…”

“If you ask me,” Kirby said, gesturing at the rain coming down, “I’d be more worried about you drowning before the ambulance gets here.”

Cassie peeled back Rawley’s shirt and examined the bullet’s entry point.

“God. I can’t watch this,” Parker said turning away. “Sorry.” Her fair skin turned a shade more pale than usual. “Sight of blood…”

“Where’s that ambulance?” Kirby said, craning his head to get a better look around the street.

“Hey…” Parker reached over and tapped Kirby on the shoulder. “Who does that look like?”

“What?” Kirby stared down the road in the direction Parker was pointing.

“Going into the building on the left.”

In the distance Kirby’s eyes flitted from one person to the next. Who was she —

There. For a split second, just before the figure disappeared into the entrance, Kirby saw the rear profile of a man. A big man. He couldn’t be sure about it — the rain cut down on visibility in the street — but the person did have the same lumbering gait, the massive back…

Parker looked at Kirby. “What do you think?”

“What is it?” Cassie asked.

“I’m not sure,” Kirby said evasively, not wanting to worry her. “I just need to check something out.”

“You’re kidding,” Rawley said in mock surprise. “Without me?”

Parker asked Kirby whether he wanted her to come along.

“No,” he said. “Stay here and keep an eye out for that ambulance. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Still inside the meeting room on the top floor, Stark handed Coleman the final press release and stood back. “I suggest you don’t take any questions until we get home.”

Home, Williams thought. It was an odd way to think about the White House. But that’s exactly what Stark had meant — as though he had lived there himself.

The phone in Stark’s pocket rang. He answered it, turning away to the wall. A moment later Williams saw him stiffen.

“Good God. Are you sure?” Stark ran over to the window, looking down to the right, then to the left. “Where exactly? I can’t see anything from…” He moved to the southeast corner of the room where the two windowed walls met. “You’re certain it was her?”

“What the hell’s going on?” Coleman asked.

Stark snapped the phone shut. “There’s a woman on the street… She claims she’s Montoya.”

Coleman stared at his chief of staff. “Well… Shit. Is she, or isn’t she?”

“They’re bringing her up now.”

“And if it is her?” Williams asked.

Coleman checked his watch. “Then we’d better sort something out with her pretty damn fast.”

Williams opened the briefcase on the table. “Alert Holloman?”

“We’ve got six minutes,” Coleman said bowing his head and staring intently at the floor.

“Chief?”

“Let me think, Leon.”

After several seconds the President looked up.

“All right. We’ll make it work. Let’s not fuck it up again. This time we get it right.”

“I’ll make the call, then?”

Coleman nodded. “When I know it’s her.”

Kirby was drenched from the rain when he left the street. He climbed the steps leading up to the building and passed through a pair of heavy dark-glass doors. The company headquarters — the place was located directly opposite the hotel — belonged to Supreme Coverage, Inc., an auto insur­ance company specializing in coverage for American trucking businesses which operated in Mexico.

In the lobby he was greeted by the staring faces of several startled receptionists, two of whom were bent over an elderly man in a gray uni­form groaning incoherently on the floor. When the women had determined that Kirby was not a threat to them, their eyes drifted back to the elevator.

“He just hit him?” one of them asked anxiously of another. “He didn’t say anything when he came in?”

“Someone get on the phone,” another woman on her knees yelled. “Tell them there’s a maniac on his way up.”

“Too late,” came the reply. They all glanced above the elevator to the lighted floor number. “Looks like he’s there.”

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