at his neck - almost as if he were crushing a wasp. He took another step forward and then stopped, staring down at his hand with a look of absolute horror. His mouth fell open and he half-turned - looking back over his shoulder at the silent woods behind him.
And then, while Smith watched in growing terror, the tall green-eyed man began to come apart. A web of red cracks snaked rapidly across his face and hands, growing ever wider. In seconds, his skin fell away, dissolving into translucent red-tinged ooze. His green eyes melted and slid down his face. The big man shrieked aloud in inhuman agony. Screaming and writhing, the giant toppled to the ground - clawing wildly at what little was left of his body in a futile effort to fight off whatever was eating him alive.
Jon could not bear to see any more. He turned, stumbled, and fell to his knees, retching uncontrollably. In that moment, something hissed past his ear and buried itself in the earth in front of him.
Instinct taking over. Smith threw himself sideways and then he crawled rapidly toward the nearest cover.
In the grove of trees, the sniper slowly lowered his odd-looking rifle. "The second target has gone to ground. I have no shot."
"It does not matter," the man with the binoculars said coldly. "One man more or less is of no real consequence." He turned to the signaler. "Contact the Center. Inform them that Field Two is under way and seems to be proceeding according to plan."
"Yes, Terce."
"What about Prime?" the sniper asked quietly. "How will you report his death?"
For a moment, the man with binoculars sat still, pondering the question. Then he asked, "Do you know the legend of the Horatii?"
The sniper shook his head.
"It is an old, old story," Terce told him. "From the days of the Romans, long before their empire. Three identical brothers, the Horatii, were sent to duel against the three champions of a neighboring city. Two fought Bravely, but they were killed. The third of the Horatii triumphed - not through sheer force of arms alone but through stealth and cunning."
The sniper said nothing.
The man with the binoculars turned his head and smiled coldlv. A stray shaft of sunlight fell on his auburn hair and lit his strikingly green eyes. "Like Prime, I am one of the Horatii. But unlike Prime, I plan to survive and to win the reward I have been promised."
Chapter Eight
PART TWO
Chapter Eight
The Hoover Building, Washington, D.C.
FBI Deputy Assistant Director Katherine ("Kit") Pierson stood at the window of her fifth-floor office, frowning down at the rain-slick surface of Pennsylvania Avenue. There were just a few cars waiting at the nearest traffic lights and only a small scattering of tourists scurrying along the avenue's broad sidewalks beneath bobbing umbrellas. The usual evening mass exodus of the city's federal workforce was still a couple of hours away.
She resisted the urge to check the time again. Waiting for others to act had never been one of her strengths.
Kit Pierson glanced up from the street and caught a faint glimpse of her reflection in the tinted glass. For a brief instant she studied herself dispassionately, wondering again why the slate gray eyes gazing back at her so often seemed those of a stranger. Even at forty-five, her ivory white skin was still smooth, and her short dark brown hair framed a face that she knew most men considered attractive.
Not that she gave them many chances to tell her so, she thought coolly.
A failed early marriage and a bitter divorce had proved to her that she could not successfully mix romance with her career in the FBI. The national interests of the Bureau and the United States always came first-even those interests her superiors were sometimes too afraid to recognize.
Pierson was aware that the agents and analysts under her command called her the Winter Queen behind her back. She shrugged that off. She drove herself much harder than she ever drove them. And it was better to be thought a bit cold and distant than to be seen as weak or inefficient. The FBI's Counter-Terrorism Division was no place for clock-punching nine-to-fivers whose eyes were fixed on their pensions rather than on the nation's ever-more dangerous enemies.
Enemies like the Lazarus Movement.
For several months now she and Hal Burke over at the CIA had warned their superiors that the Lazarus Movement was becoming a direct threat to the vital interests of the United