sentence, flagging the man for execution. A distant sniper would have keyed to the color. But why send someone to "make an approach" if the plan was to kill him?
Ambler had to leave the Sourlands. The Honda had no doubt already been located. What other vehicles were in the area? He remembered seeing a tarp-covered Gator, a quarter of a mile up the hill. It was a low green off-road utility vehicle, capable of traversing almost any terrain-swamps, streams, hills.
When he reached it, he wasn't surprised to find that the keys were in it. This was still a part of the world where nobody locked his front door. The Gator started up easily, and Ambler drove through the woods as fast as it would go, holding on to the steering wheel when the vehicle bounced over rocks, ducking his head down when low branches threatened. It lurched easily over brambles and thickets; as long as he had room to maneuver between trees, the underbrush would not stop him. Nor would the rocky gulches and streams. The ride was bumpy and lurching, like mounting a horse that hadn't quite been broken; but its grip of the terrain was never less than secure.
The windshield of the Gator suddenly exploded, turned opaque with spider-webbing.
A second bullet had finally arrived.
He steered crazily, randomly, hoping that the bouncing of the vehicle on rough terrain would make him harder to keep in the crosshairs of the sniper scope. Meanwhile, his mind reeled, in a wilderness of uncertainties. The line of fire told him that the shot had to have been fired from somewhere across the lake-somewhere in the area of McGruder's old house. Or the pylon farther up the hill. Or-he scanned the horizon in his mind-the grain silo at the Step-toe farm, a little up the hill. Yes, that's where he would set up if he was running an op. Safety lay up the slopes to where the incline gave way to an indented area. A paved road ran along it, and if he could reach it, he'd be protected from the sniper by the earth itself.
Gunning the engine, he found the vehicle was able to move up the steepest slopes of the Sourland Mountains with ease; ten minutes later, he reached the road. The Gator was too slow to keep up with regular automotive traffic, and the gunshot-shattered windshield would attract the wrong kind of notice. So he drove the Gator behind a dense stand of eastern red cedars and turned off the engine.
There was no sound of any pursuer, no sound of anything but the ticking of the Gator's stilled engine and the rushing of cars on the nearby mountain road.
He took out the slain man's PDA.
They want to sign you up.
The man had believed it, but was it a ruse? Clearly, whatever outfit had recruited the American ex-operative intended to keep itself at a remove: breakaway security. Yet Ambler had to learn what they knew. Now it was up to him to make an "approach," but on his terms and as someone other than who he was. To overcome the mechanisms of caution, the message needed to promise something-threaten something? The imagination was a powerful thing: the less specific the message, the better.
After a few moments' thought, he thumb-typed a message, one that was terse but carefully crafted.
An encounter with the subject, he explained, had not gone as planned, but he now found himself in possession of some "interesting documents." A meeting would be necessary. He kept the explanation minimal, without elaboration of any sort.
Awaiting instructions, he typed. Then he sent the message off to whoever was at the other end of the cryptosystem.
Now he made his way to the side of the road. In the camouflage jacket, he would look like an out-of-season hunter. Few people from the area were likely to disapprove. A couple of minutes later, a middle-aged woman driving a GMC with an overflowing cigarette tray picked him up. She had a lot on her mind and talked nonstop before dropping him off at the Motel 6 near Route 173. Ambler was certain he had made polite noises as she spoke, but he barely heard a word.
Seventy-five dollars for a room. For a brief moment he worried that he wouldn't have enough, but then he remembered the belt wallet. Checking in-under a randomly confected name-he struggled to keep at bay the utter exhaustion that threatened to engulf him at any moment and probably would have even without whatever