The Janson Directive - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,39

directly at Janson. Focusing intently, he had evidently made out his form in the shadowed corner.

The soldier's hand reached for a revolver, bolstered on his side - and then he toppled forward off the veranda. Janson could hear the thud of his body hitting the cobblestones six feet below him. Two other sentries slid to the ground, losing consciousness.

A jabbering exchange broke out between two of the younger guards, to his far left. They knew something was wrong. Hadn't Katsaris hit them yet?

The use of the incapacitant was not simply an attempt to be humane. Few human beings had experience with a carfentanil dart; there was a ten-second window when they would assume they had been stung by an insect. By contrast, there was nothing mysterious about gunfire: if a silenced shot didn't cause instant unconsciousness - if it failed to penetrate the midbrain region - the victim would pierce the night with his yells, sounding the alarm for everyone to hear. In stealthy, close-up encounters, gar-roting would do, choking off air as it did blood, but that was not an option here. If the blow darts were a risky approach, tactical optimization was not about choosing the best possible approach; it was about choosing the best one available.

Janson aimed his blowpipe toward the jabbering two guards and was preparing to send off another dart when the two woozily collapsed; Katsaris had hit them after all.

Silence returned, softened only by the cawing of magpies and gulls, the buzzing and scraping of cicadas and beetles. It sounded right. It sounded as if the problem had been dealt with, and the men had returned to watchful waiting.

Yet the safety they had just gained for themselves could vanish at any moment. The information they had distilled from intercepts and sat imagery suggested that the next shift would not arrive for another hour - but there was no guarantee that the schedule had not changed. Every minute was now of immense value.

Janson and Katsaris made a dash for the darkness beneath the northern veranda, sliding between the stout piers that supported it at three-foot intervals. According to the blueprints, the circular stone lid was at the midpoint of the northern wall, just abutting the limestone of the main structure. Blindly, Janson felt along the ground, his hands moving along the rubblework foundations where ground and building met. Suddenly, he felt something poking at his hand, then sliding over it, like a taut rubber hose. He jerked back. He had disturbed a snake. Most varieties on the island were harmless, but the poisonous ones - including the saw-scaled viper and the Anuran krait - happened to be quite common. He pulled a combat knife from his fatigues and whipped it in the direction where the snake had been probing him. The knife encountered midair resistance - it had hit something - and he brought it down silently to the stone wall. Something sinewy and dense gave way before the razor-sharp blade.

"I found it," Theo whispered, from a few feet away.

Janson turned on a small infrared flashlight and strapped on his night-vision scope, adjusting it from starlight mode to IR mode.

Theo was crouching before a large stone disk. The grotto under their feet had been used for any number of purposes over the years. The storage of prisoners was a principal one. At other points in time, it had been used for the storage of inanimate objects, ranging from foodstuffs to ammunition, and beneath the heavy circular masonry was a vertical passageway that was made to serve as a chute. The lid had been designed to be removed easily, but the passage of years had a way of complicating matters. That it could be removed at all would be sufficient.

The lid was fashioned with handholds on either side. Theo pulled on one, using his powerful legs as he tried to lift the flat round stone. Nothing. The only sound was his stifled grunt.

Now Janson joined him, crouching on the opposite side, placing both his hands on the slot that had been designed for that purpose. Bracing himself with his legs, he flexed his arms as hard as he could. He could hear Theo letting his breath out slowly as he strained himself to the utmost.

Nothing.

"Twist it," Janson whispered.

"It's not a jar of olives," Theo said, but he repositioned himself accordingly. He braced himself with his legs against the perpendicular wall and, locking his hands around the slotted flange, pushed at the lid. On the other side,