skin deeply creased, appeared on the veranda, enjoining silence. Silence: so as not to wake the sleeping commanders, who had taken residence in the palace as its proper and rightful inhabitants. As Janson focused on the older man, however, his unease grew. The man spoke of silence, but his face told Janson that it was not his sole, or even primary, concern. Only a larger sense of suspicion could explain the squinted, searching eyes; the fact that his focus moved quickly from the panicked sentries to the shadowy courtyard beyond him, and then to the iron-grilled windows above him. His darting gaze showed that he understood the peculiarities of nighttime vision: the way peripheral vision became more acute than direct vision, the way a direct stare transfigured shapes according to the imagination. At night, observant eyes never stopped moving; the brain could assemble an image from the flickering outlines they collected.
As Janson regarded the man's creased face, he made some other quick inferences. This was an intelligent, wary man, disinclined to take the incident at face value. From the way the other men deferred to him, his position of seniority was obvious. Another sign of it was the very weapon cradled in a sling around his shoulders: a Russian KLIN. A commonplace weapon, but a smaller and slightly more expensive make than the Ml6s. The KLIN was more reliable for tight-cluster shooting, as opposed to the raking fire to be expected from the relatively untrained.
The others would take their lead from him.
Janson watched him for a few more moments, saw him talking quietly in Kagama, gesturing toward the darkened courtyard, excoriating a sentry who had been smoking. This man was not an amateur.
Detection was death. Had they been detected?
He had to make the contrary assumption. The contrary assumption: What would Lieutenant Commander Alan Demarest have made of such reasoning, of the hopeful stipulation that the world would conform to one's operational imperatives, rather than confound them? But Demarest was dead - had died before a firing squad - and, if there was any justice in the universe, was rotting in hell. At four o'clock on a sweltering Anuran morning, in the courtyard of the Stone Palace, surrounded by heavily armed terrorists, there was no advantage in calculating the operation's chances of success. Its tenets were, had to be, nearly theological. Credo quia absurdum. I believe because it is absurd.
And the older man with the creased face: What did he believe? He was the one to take out first. But had enough time passed? By now, word of the small commotion would have been spread among those on duty. It was crucial that an explanation for it - the appearance of the accursed bandicoot - had spread as well. Because there would be other noises. That was inevitable. Noises that had an explanation were innocuous. Noises that lacked an explanation would prompt further investigation, and could be deadly.
Janson withdrew the Blo-Jector, a twenty-inch pipe of anodized aluminum, from a dangle pouch on his black fatigues. Pockets and pouches had presented an operational challenge. They could not afford the ripping sound of Velcro, the clicking noise of a metal snap, so he had replaced such fasteners with a soundless contrivance. A pair of magnetic strips, sealed within soft woolen cladding, did the job: the magnets would keep the flaps shut tightly, yet would release and engage soundlessly.
Janson whispered his plan into his lip mike. He would take the tall and the guard to his right; Katsaris should aim for the others. Janson raised the rubber mouthpiece of the blowpipe to his lips, sighting over the end of the tube. The dart was of covert-ops design, a fine, 33-gauge needle and bolus housed within an acrylic-and-Mylar replica of a wasp. The artificial insect would withstand no more than a casual inspection, but if things went right, a casual inspection was all it would receive. He puffed hard into the mouthpiece, then quickly inserted another dart, and discharged it. He returned to his crouching position.
The tall man grabbed at his neck, pulled out the dart, and peered at it in the dim light. Had he removed it before it had injected its bolus? The object had visual and tactile resemblances to a large stinging insect: the stiff exoskeleton, the striped body. But its weight would be wrong, particularly if it still contained the incapacitant fluid, one milliliter of carfentanil citrate. The man with the creased face stared at it furiously, and then he looked