the north wing, the exercise would prove self-defeating. So far there was no
sign of that, although the guards who were already present were plainly
agitated. Moving his head to the edge of the berm line, he watched the quiet
confusion and dismay that had swept through the northern veranda. His
destination was the space beneath that veranda, and there was no covered route
to it, for the stone walkways that projected from the long east and west walls
of the compound stopped fifteen feet before they reached the wall opposite.
That the guards were sitting in the light, whereas he and Katsaris would be in
the dark, offered some protection, but not enough: the human visual field was
sensitive to motion, and some of the interior light spilled onto the cobbled
ground in front of the northern veranda. The mission required absolute stealth:
however well trained and equipped, two men could not hold off the hundred or so
guerrillas who were housed in the Stone Palace barracks. Detection was death. It
was that simple.
Thirty feet away and six feet up, an older man, his leathery brown 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
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