knew that, but reminders did no harm, and there was no objection. As they drove along the unpaved access road, raising a plume of dust concealed by midnight darkness, al-Rachid dropped his map and lifted the twin rifles from the car’s floorboard.
They dared not drive directly to the house itself. Even with the headlights off, that would alert the guards and destroy their advantage of surprise. Al-Rachid would stop his driver halfway to the desert bungalow, then proceed on foot across the arid landscape to their goal.
With luck, he hoped to catch the target and at least one of his bodyguards asleep. The agents had to sleep and eat in shifts, with two or three of them remaining on alert around the clock.
But how alert?
Al-Rachid smiled as the car slowed, coasting to a halt.
A few more moments, and he would find out.
Crooked Island, Florida
ARMAND CASALE MET the first guard when he was still fifty yards from the house. He was surprised to find the middle-aged FBI agent at large after midnight, prowling the grounds while a chill breeze blew in from the gulf, but Casale supposed that even G-men got bored sometimes.
The agent had a riot-model shotgun, but he carried it in one hand, dangling beside his leg, its muzzle pointed toward the earth. Even if it was cocked, to fire the weapon Casale’s enemy would have to shift his hold, relocate his right hand to clutch the pistol grip and let his index finger slip inside the trigger guard.
Casale didn’t plan to give him time for that.
He crouched in shadow, perfectly immobile, scarcely breathing, as the roving sentry passed his hiding place. Casale saw the Kevlar vest his adversary wore, without a jacket to conceal it, and it didn’t worry him.
Ironically, while varied thicknesses of Kevlar could deflect most small-arms fire, they offered no significant protection against blades.
Casale gave his target three last strides, then rose from hiding, rushed upon him from behind and clamped his left hand tight against the agent’s mouth. His right hand drove the WASP’s blade through the Kevlar vest, which offered no more physical resistance than a heavy overcoat.
At once, Casale triggered the release of freezing CO2 into the G-man’s body cavity. The icy gas expanded instantly, traumatically displacing heart and lungs and arresting their performance in the time it took Casale to withdraw his blade. The dead man bucked and quivered in Casale’s grasp, then suddenly went limp and slumped facedown in the sand.
Casale reloaded the WASP, replacing its spent cartridge with a fresh one, then moved on. So far, his mission was on schedule, going off without a hitch.
He met no other lookouts between the killzone and the house. Approaching through the darkness, he saw lighted windows with their curtains drawn against the night, a television flickering from one room where the other lights had been extinguished.
No one saw Casale draw his silenced pistol from its plastic bag. No cameras scanned the house or yard, an oversight that would rebound against someone in Washington the next day, when the night’s news broke. Armand Casale circled the safehouse clockwise, searching curtained windows for a gap that would permit a glimpse inside.
He returned to his starting point without a break.
If nothing else, the FBI was good with drapes.
Casale didn’t know the walking sentry’s schedule, but he guessed that thirty minutes would be stretching it. How long had the G-man been prowling when they met? It was impossible to say.
Impossible, as well, for him to guess the knocks or other recognition signals that had been arranged between the agents guarding his primary target. Locating the safehouse had been difficult enough, and costly, but his sponsor didn’t have the juice to penetrate the local FBI itself and pick its brains.
No matter. Casale would make his way inside the house by any means required.
First he would try the doors.
They should be locked, of course. Locking the doors and windows was the most basic of all security precautions. Still, even the best-trained sentries sometimes made mistakes, and if the agents in the house expected their companion to return shortly…
Casale tried the back door first, considering it the more likely choice of sentries going out to search the woods and dunes. Like many seaside homes, the safehouse’s front door faced inland, while its back door and rear windows faced the sea.
Casale curled gloved fingers around the knob and tested it.
It turned.
Casale held his breath, expecting shrill alarms, a shouted warning, even gunfire.
Nothing happened.
Following the Walther’s lead, he stepped into a well-lit but empty kitchen.
He crossed the room, stepped into a darker corridor that branched left and right. The television sounds came from his left, presumably one of the bedrooms. Turning to his right, he followed the drone of voices speaking quietly but with no apparent effort at concealment.
Midnight was a quiet time, and Death was near.
Casale stepped into what would’ve been the living room and found two agents sprawled in easy chairs, debating some fine point of the derivative team sport Americans called football. One G-man faced the doorway where Casale stood; the other had his back turned toward his assassin.
The first man lurched forward, reaching for his gun. The sudden forward motion brought his face to meet Casale’s silent slug. Casale barely registered the splat of blood and brain against the chair’s upholstery.
He fired again before the second man could rise and turn, his neck and torso twisted as he tried to draw his pistol, strained to glimpse his enemy.
Too late.
The second bullet drilled his temple and kept going, spilling any final thoughts across the cheap rust-colored carpet. When he fell, the impact of his body was a solid, final sound.
Two left.
Casale doubled back along the hallway, slightly worried that some noise might have alerted the safehouse survivors. He tried the first bedroom and caught the last G-man asleep, blinking defensively against the spill of light before a bullet sent him to dreamland forever.
That left one.
Casale knew his primary target wouldn’t have a weapon. That was strictly, fatally forbidden by the WITSEC code. Only the guardians were armed, trusted to sacrifice themselves on the behalf of those they were assigned to watch.
Now, with the sacrifice complete, the target was defenseless.
He half expected that the last door would be locked, some vestige of a challenge for his effort, but the knob turned easily. Casale stepped across the threshold, recognized his target instantly from photos he had memorized.
The man lay on his back in bed. At the intrusion, he sat up.
“Vincent Onofre,” Casale said. Not a question, simply making sure.
The
