The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,111

you see it, Janson. Let yourself feel it. Relax into the shot." How surprised he was when he took it and hit his target. He was never in the same league as those who now pursued him, but he did it well and reliably because he'd had to. And his having been on the other side of the scope made his current position that much more nerve-racking.

He knew what they saw. He knew what they thought.

The master sniper's world would be reduced to the circular image through his scope, and then to the relation between the darting body and the scope's crosshairs. His gun is a Remington 700, or a Galil 7.62, or an M40A1. He would have found the spot-weld, the contact point between his cheek and the rifle stock; the rifle would feel like an extension of his body. He would take a deep breath and let it out fully, and then another breath, and let it out halfway. A laser range finder could tell him the precise distance: the scope adjusted to compensate for bullet drop. The crosshairs would settle upon the rectangle that was the subject's torso. More breath would be expelled, the rest held, and the finger would caress the trigger ...

Janson dropped to the ground, adopting a sitting position by the crying girl. "Hey," he said to her. "It's going to be all right."

"We don't like you," she said. Him personally? Americans in general? Who could fathom the mind of a seven-year-old?

Janson gently took her binoculars, lifting the straps from around her shoulders, and quickly set off.

"Mummy!" It came out somewhere between a scream and a whine.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the mother bellowed, red-faced.

Janson, clutching the binoculars, dashed toward the wooden bandstand, two hundred yards away. Every time his position changed significantly, the snipers would have adjusted their sightings. The woman ran after him, puffing but determined. She had left her child behind, and now stomped after him with a spray bottle she had extracted from her purse.

An aerosol can of pepper spray. She was striding toward him with a look that combined disapproval and rage, Mary Poppins with mad cow disease. "Damn you!" she shouted. "Damn you! Damn you!" There were countless Brits just like her, their powerful calves stuck into Wellingtons, their bird-watching manuals stuck into bottomless handbags. They invariably collected string and ate Marmite and smelled of toast.

He turned to see her holding the bottle of pepper spray at arm's length, her features twisted into a vicious grin as she prepared to spray a noxious jet of capsicum oleoresin into his face.

There was an odd clang a split second before her bottle burst, and a cloud of pepper exploded around the torn metal of the canister.

A look of utter disbelief passed over her face: she had no experience with what happened when a bullet destroyed a pressurized container. Then the cloud drifted over her.

"Defective, I guess," Janson offered.

Tears streaming from her eyes, the woman spun on her flat-heeled shoes and rushed away from him, gagging and hacking, her breathing now a reedy stridor. Then she threw herself into the lake, hoping for relief from the searing heat.

Thwack. A bullet struck the wood of the bandstand, the closest shot yet. Snipers who used high-precision bolt-action rifles paid for greater accuracy with reduced frequency. Janson rolled on the ground until he was under the bandstand, the abandoned concert area, before which plastic chairs were neatly set out for a concert that evening.

The trelliswork of the base would not protect him from bullets, but it would make him more difficult to sight. It would buy him a little time, which was what he most needed right now.

Now he dialed up the binoculars, testing various focal points, avoiding dazzle from the late-afternoon sun.

It was maddening. The sun lit up the boom derrick of the crane like a match; it cast a halo over the trees.

The trees, the trees. Oak, beech, chestnut, ash. Their branches were irregular, the leafy canopies irregular, too. And there were so many of them - a hundred, maybe two hundred. Which was the tallest, and the densest? A rough eyeballing of the arboreal clusters suggested a couple of candidates. Now Janson zoomed the binoculars to maximum magnification and scrutinized just those trees.

Leaves. Twigs. Branches. And -

Movement. The hairs on his neck raised.

A breeze was scurrying through the trees: of course there was movement. The leaves fluttered; the slender branches swayed, too. Yet he had to trust his