"As I mentioned before, Dorn detests them. He's trying to destroy them. He's trying to eradicate what legally allows them to exist. He hates that they operate without his direction or knowledge. They know this. So they're trying to kill him first."

"Maybe Bill Jensen isn't in hiding," Sterling said. "Maybe he's dead. Maybe those elements loyal to Dorn already got him."

"According to my source, Jensen is a resourceful man, and he antic.i.p.ated the danger. So he went underground." Gadanz gestured at Sterling. "Jensen has two sons, Jack and Troy. I want them dead, too."

"Why?"

"Troy is a Red Cell Seven agent. If you kill his father, he'll stop at nothing to kill you and me when he finds out I am behind everything, which he most certainly would."

"Is the other one Red Cell Seven, too?"

"No. Jack's a bond trader."

Sterling sneered. "Those Wall Street guys like to think they're tough, but-"

"Don't underestimate this one."

"What do you mean?"

"Last fall Jack saved Troy's life in Alaska."

"Why did Troy need to be saved?"

"He'd uncovered the plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate President Dorn by a senior Red Cell Seven agent named Shane Maddux."

Sterling's eyes flashed toward Gadanz. He knew that name. Everyone who was anyone in the spook world did. "Shane Maddux is Red Cell Seven?"

"Apparently."

"Is he your source?"

"Of course not. Maddux would never give away information about Red Cell Seven. He lives for it." Gadanz pointed the cigar at Sterling. "If you ask me that question again, Liam, I'll have you executed immediately."

Sterling glanced back at the doorway. "Easy, Daniel." He couldn't tell if Gadanz was kidding.

"As a matter of fact, if you come across Shane Maddux during this mission, kill him, too. As I understand it, he was one of the men directly responsible for finding and overrunning my compound in Florida last December." A sad expression clouded Gadanz's face. "I so liked that compound."

Sterling glanced at the young woman again. She was definitely smiling back this time. That quickly they'd made a wonderful connection. That quickly he wanted to be her knight in shining armor.

"So, Mr. Sterling, are you going to help me?"

There was only one answer, even if Sterling had no intention of being involved. If he were to decline now, Gadanz would never let him leave the compound alive. If he declined later, he'd be on the run for the rest of his life.

But he could deal with that. Last he'd heard there were three bona fide contracts out on his life, all sponsored by very serious people. But they hadn't found him yet, and neither would Daniel Gadanz. There was always another disguise to invent.

"Of course," Sterling answered, aware that his voice was trembling slightly. He couldn't help it. Gadanz had just offered him three hundred million dollars, if he was doing the math correctly. He was saying yes because he meant it, not because he was trying to escape. "I'm all in."

Gadanz clenched the cigar with his teeth and clapped twice.

The four women stood up. Two of them-including the one Sterling found so lovely-took him by the hands and led him down the stairs to a far corner of the room, where they guided him to the wall until his back was against it.

"My G.o.d," Sterling whispered as the four young women undressed him and then began to kiss every inch of his naked body. "I should dream more often." The girl he'd traded glances with began to kneel down in front of him, but he caught her gently by one arm. "Stay here with me," he murmured. "Let the others do that." He loved the way she was gazing deeply into his eyes. He loved that beautiful, high-cheekboned smile of hers. "Kiss me."

GADANZ WATCHED the women undress Sterling exactly as he'd ordered them to. He watched them kiss Sterling's unremarkable body up and down, watched them do all the things he desperately wanted them to do to him. And as he looked on breathlessly, he could feel that antic.i.p.ation building in every fiber of his being-except the fibers that mattered most.

He was hungry for s.e.x. For years he'd been hungry for it. But since that steamy July night in Colombia three years ago, he'd been unable to perform. It had been horribly embarra.s.sing the next morning when he'd tried to have s.e.x with them again. Out of nowhere nothing had happened, and the two women had giggled at his failure.

They'd wished they hadn't. He'd had both of them summarily executed, but it hadn't eased his frustration. Since that morning, he'd been impotent.

Despite the lewd act playing out in front of him, nothing physical was happening. His mind was on fire thanks to the images. But his body was unplugged.

When Sterling cried out loudly with pleasure, Gadanz clenched his teeth so hard one of them chipped, and his mouth was suddenly on fire. Worse, the migraine was intensifying despite the pills he'd popped into his mouth a few moments ago and washed down with a waterfall of scotch from the silver flask he always kept in his robe pocket.

He swallowed the piece of tooth with another belt from the flask, then, with a ma.s.sive effort, pulled himself out of the large chair and stalked heavily down the stairs. The pain in his mouth and the skull-splitting headache were driving him mad.

Gadanz pushed through the curtains and into the hallway, then headed toward a room where he knew he would achieve gratification and pleasure-not s.e.xual, but a close second.

The old man stood in a corner of the cold dank room, sobbing uncontrollably when he wasn't shivering. His wrists were secured tightly behind his back, and there was a noose hanging loosely around his neck.

"Shut up," Gadanz hissed at the old man as he brushed past the lone guard at the door. "Have dignity in your final moments."

Gadanz moved to a wall and a crank that was attached to a rope leading to the noose around the old man's neck. The old man didn't know it, but his granddaughter was one of the young women in the other room pleasing Sterling.

"Are you ready to die?" Gadanz called out as another, lesser bolt of pain seared through his forehead. At some point he was going to find that amateur psychologist who'd told him he could solve his impotence by watching s.e.x acts, and hang that man, too. Then he was going to find the other three doctors who couldn't cure the migraines and kill them as well. "Well?"

"Please don't do this," the old man begged in Spanish.

"I am doing it. Stop begging. Begging will do you no good."

"What have I done wrong?"

For a moment Gadanz almost felt compa.s.sion. The victim had done nothing wrong. He was simply a convenience, a man in the wrong place at the wrong time, the first one the guards had come upon in the village down the mountain earlier this evening.

"You've done nothing wrong," Gadanz answered as he began slowly turning the crank, any tiny drop of sympathy he'd felt for the old man evaporating. "It's just your time."

"No, no, please don't-" The old man gasped as the noose pulled his chin up and back and then lifted his toes off the wet cement floor.

Gadanz's breath went short while the old man fought death. Despite his advanced age, he struggled mightily, legs flailing as if he were sprinting through the jungle being chased by a jaguar, Gadanz mused.

It fascinated Gadanz to watch people die. The moment of ultimate desperation was so compelling, and he moved closer as the man twisted and turned in agony so he could see the despair up close. He stared into the old panic-stricken brown eyes from a foot away as the gasps finally eased, the legs dangled straight down, and all went quiet. What had that man seen in those last few moments? Was death as liberating as it seemed to be from this side of the equation? Gadanz wanted to know so badly. Perhaps suicide wouldn't be so painful after all.

Another shot of antipleasure knifed through his forehead and down into one eye. When he could see again, Gadanz whipped around toward the guard who was standing ten feet away at the door. "Give me your weapon!" he shouted, pointing wildly at the submachine gun the man was wielding.

"Sir?"

"Give me the G.o.dd.a.m.n gun," Gadanz demanded as he strode toward the guard purposefully. He hated that the man had hesitated to obey his order, even for a moment. It never occurred to him that the guard was terrified of his leader committing suicide, and that he was trying to protect, not defy. "Give it to me!"

Gadanz grabbed the weapon away from the wide-eyed man, and for several seconds they stared at each other from close range. Then Gadanz lifted the weapon and fired.

The guard tumbled backward, dead before his body hit the floor, shredded by fifteen bullets.

Gadanz stared down at the corpse grimly. He hadn't really enjoyed that. It had been over too fast.

He tossed the gun down and began to stalk from the dimly lit room. But before he reached the doorway another bolt seared through his head, and then, for the first time, down into the rest of his body.

He dropped to his knees beside the guard's corpse. "Why won't it stop?!" he screamed as he grabbed his long, dark hair and pulled as hard as he could. "Why won't it f.u.c.king stop?"

AFTER EASING the F-22 Raptor down smoothly on the long runway of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson outside Anchorage, Alaska, Commander McCoy hopped down the last step of the ladder leading from the c.o.c.kpit to the ground, knelt to the tarmac, and kissed the asphalt. Home again.

Well, almost.

She rose up and began jogging toward the waiting jeep. The jog quickly turned into an all-out sprint. Kodiak Island was so close.

CHAPTER 6.

JACK AND Troy stood side by side on the sprawling porch at the back of the Jensen mansion. Constructed on several hundred picturesque acres of rolling fields and forest outside Greenwich, Connecticut, the mansion was the centerpiece of an impressive compound in the middle of an impressive property. Bill Jensen owned other houses around the world, but this was home.

"So, where were you?" Jack asked as he leaned over and put his forearms on the waist-high stone wall that bordered three sides of the porch. He was staring at a distant tree line through the long-shadowed September evening and across green pastures dotted with several barns. Their mother, Cheryl, loved Thoroughbred horses and rode almost every day. "I called you a few times, but I never heard back."

"I was climbing K2. We did it from the Chinese side."

"Bulls.h.i.t. I would have read about it."

"I've done Everest, so why not?"

"Look, I was worried about-"

"I can't say where I was, Jack. You know that."

Jack shook his head as thunder rumbled in the distance. "Isn't all the secrecy with me kind of ridiculous at this point?"

"No."

"After I got you out of Alaska, after Karen got shot in Wyoming getting the Order and protecting the peak?"

Troy grimaced. "I'm sorry about Karen. You know that."

"If you were really sorry, you'd hate Shane Maddux."

"Don't start with me about him."

"You still aren't going to tell me where you were?"

"I can't."

"I know as much about Red Cell Seven as anyone."

"You think you do."

"I know you've been using that d.a.m.n room in the bas.e.m.e.nt again."

After a few moments Troy asked, "How are you and Karen doing?"

"Dodging me again?"

"I have to. You know that."

"See?"

Troy chuckled. "Good one, brother."

Jack flicked a tiny pearl-white pebble from atop the stone wall, and it fell ten feet down into the dark mulch of a neatly manicured rose garden. "Karen and I are doing fine."

"Marriage is still pure bliss?"

"Karen's my soul mate. She was right away, as soon as I saw her. You know that."

Troy shook his head. "Even after-"

"Even then." Jack knew where Troy was headed with this. "It doesn't matter what happened to her in Wyoming. I love her. She's still the same person."

"Uh, okay."

Jack heard the sarcasm, which was unusual. Troy rarely used it. "She is, d.a.m.n it."

"Okay."

"What about Jennie?" Jack didn't want to dwell on Karen's condition. "She's a nice girl."

"Sure she is. But she isn't my soul mate. I doubt I'll ever find a woman who is. Marriage seems too permanent."

Troy was such a rolling stone. "That's the whole point."

"Yeah, but most people I know who've been married for a while wonder if they did the right thing. They may not say it directly, but it's in their eyes." Troy chuckled like he'd dodged a bullet. "I guess that's why it's called wedlock."

There was something going on here, Jack figured. "Am I sensing trouble in paradise?"

"I never said Jennie and I were in paradise." Troy banged the top of the wall with his fist. "It's hard to keep a relationship together when the two people in it are apart a lot. She hates it that I'm gone all the time, and that I can't tell her where I go." He shrugged. "Hey, look at Mom and Dad."

"Dad's disappearance has nothing to do with Mom or their marriage."

"You don't know that, Jack. No one does."