The funny part was that it wasnt entirely a lie: The guys who killed Sergeant Braden were connected with the pirates. The feds think that the pirates may have ordered his murderand his wifes.

How sure are you of that? the detective asked.

Sure as I can be. The clerk emptied his glass and set it down.

Okay, the cop said. Thanks. We never heard it from you. Thanks for what you guys did for the Braden kids, too.

The clerk was embarrassed by that. What he did for the families of cops and firemen wasnt done for thanks. It was Duty, pure and simple. His Reward would come from Him who assigned that Duty.

The clerk left, and the lieutenant walked to a corner booth to join a few of his colleagues. It was soon agreed that the pirates would notcould notbe allowed to cop a plea on this one. Federal case or not, they were guilty of multiple rape and murderand, it would seem, guilty of another double murder in which the Mobile police had direct interest. The word was already on the street: the lives of druggies were at risk. It was another case of sending a message. The advantage that police officers had over more senior government officials was that they spoke in a language that criminals fully understood.

But who, another detective asked, would deliver the message?

How about the Patterson boys? the lieutenant answered.

Ahh, the captain said. He considered the question for a moment, then: Okay. It was, on the whole, a decision far more easily arrived at than the great and weighty decisions reached by governments. And far more easily implemented.

The two peasants arrived in Medelln around sundown. Cortez was thoroughly frustrated by this time. Eight bodies to be disposed ofnot all that difficult a thing to do in Medellnfor no good reason. He was sure of that now. As sure as hed been of the opposite thing six hours earlier. So where was the information leak? Three women and five men had just died proving that they werent it. The last two had just been shot in the head, uselessly catatonic after watching the first six die under less merciful circumstances. The room was a mess, and Cortez felt soiled by it. All that effort wasted. Killing people for no good reason. He was too angry to be ashamed.

He met with the peasants in another room on another floor after washing his hands and changing his clothes. They were frightened, but not of Cortez, which surprised Flix greatly. It took several minutes to understand why. They told their stories in an overly rapid and disjointed manner, which he allowed, memorizing the detailssome of them conflicting, but that was not unexpected since there were two of thembefore he began asking his own, directed questions.

The rifles were not AK-47s, one said positively. I know the sound. It was not that one. The other shrugged. He didnt know one weapon from another.

Did you see anyone?

No, seor. We heard the noise and the shouting, and we ran.

Very sensible of you, Cortez noted. Shouting, you say? In what language?

Why, in our language. We heard them chasing after us, but we ran. They didnt catch us. We know the mountains, the weapons expert explained.

You saw and heard nothing else?

The shooting, the explosions, lightsflashes from the guns, that is all.

The place where it happenedhow many times had you been there?

Many times, seor, it is where we make the paste.

Many times, the other confirmed. For over a year we have gone there.

You will tell no one that you came here. You will tell no one anything that you know, Flix told them.

But the families of You will tell no one, Cortez repeated in a quiet, serious voice. Both men knew danger when they saw it. You will be well rewarded for what you have done, and the families of the others will be compensated.

Cortez deemed himself a fair man. These two mountain folk had served his purposes well, and they would be properly rewarded. He still didnt know where the leak was, but if he could get ahold of one of thosewhat? M-19 bands? Somehow he didnt think so.

Then who?

Americans?

If anything, the death of Rocha had only increased their resolve, Chavez knew. Captain Ramirez had taken it pretty hard, but that was to be expected from a good officer. Their new patrol base was only two miles from one of the many coffee plantations in the area, and two miles in a different direction from yet another processing site. The men were in their normal daytime routine. Half asleep, half standing guard.

Ramirez sat alone. Chavez was correct. He had taken it hard. In an intellectual sense, the captain knew that he should accept the death of one of his men as a simple cost of doing business. But emotions are not the same as intellect. It was also true, though Ramirez didnt think along these precise lines, that historically there is no way to predict which officers are suited for combat operations and which are not. Ramirez had committed a typical mistake for combat leaders. He had grown too close to his men. He was unable to think of them as expendable assets. His failure had nothing to do with courage. The captain had enough of that; risking his own life was a part of the job he readily accepted. Where he failed was in understanding that risking the lives of his menwhich he also knew to be part of the jobinevitably meant that some would die. Somehow hed forgotten that. As a company commander hed led his men on countless field exercises, training them, showing them how to do their jobs, chiding them when their laser-sensing Miles gear went off to denote a simulated casualty. But Rocha hadnt been a simulation, had he? And it wasnt as though Rocha had been a slicksleeved new kid. Hed been a skilled pro. That meant that hed somehow failed his men, Ramirez told himself, knowing that it was wrong even as he thought it. If hed deployed better, if hed paid more attention, if, if, if. The young captain tried to shake it off but couldnt. But he couldnt quit either. So hed be more careful next time.

The tape cassettes arrived together just after lunch. The COD flight from Ranger, unbeknownst to anyone involved, had been coordinated with a courier flight from Bogot. Larson had handled part of it, flying the tape from the GLD to El Dorado where he handed it off to another CIA officer. Both cassettes were tucked in the satchel of an Agency courier who rode in the front cabin of the Air Force C-5A transport, catching a few hours sleep in one of the cramped bunks on the right side of the aircraft, a few feet behind the flight deck. The flight came directly into Andrews, and, after its landing, the forty-foot ladder was let down into the cavernous cargo area and the courier walked out the opened cargo door to a waiting Agency car which sped directly to Langley.

Ritter had a pair of television sets in his office, each with its own VCR. He watched them alone, cueing the tapes until they were roughly synchronized. The one from the aircraft didnt show very much. You could see the laser dot and the rough outline of the house, but little else until the flash of the detonation. Clarks tape was far better. There was the house, its lighted windows flaring in the light-amplified picture, and the guards wandering aboutthose with cigarettes looked like lightning bugs; each time they took a drag their faces were lit brightly by the glow. Then the bomb. It was very much like watching a Hitchcock movie, Ritter thought. He knew what was happening, but those on the screen did not. They wandered around aimlessly, unaware of the part they played in a drama written in the office of the Deputy Director (Operations) of the Central Intelligence Agency. But Thats funny . . . Ritter said to himself. He used his remote control to back up the tape. Seconds before the bomb went off, a new car appeared at the gate. Who might you be? he asked the screen. Then he fast-forwarded the tape past the explosion. The car hed seen driving upa BMWhad been flipped over by the shock wave, but seconds later the driver got out and pulled a pistol.

Cortez . . . He froze the frame. The picture didnt tell him much. It was a man of medium dimensions. While everyone else around the wrecked house raced about without much in the way of purpose, this man just stood there for a little while, then revived himself at the fountainwasnt it odd that it still worked! Ritter thoughtand next went to where the bomb had gone off. He couldnt have been a retainer of one of the Cartel members. They were all plowing through the rubble by this time. No, this one was already trying to figure out what had happened. It was right before the tape changed over to blank noise that he got the best picture. That had to be Flix Cortez. Looking around, already thinking, already trying to figure things out. That was a real pro.

Damn, that was close, Ritter breathed. One more minute and you would have parked your car over with the others. One more damned minute! Ritter pulled both tapes and tucked them in his office safe along with all of the EAGLE EYE, SHOWBOAT, and RECIPROCITY material. Next time, he promised the tape cassette. Then he started thinking. Was Cortez really involved in the assassination?

Gawd, Ritter said aloud in his office. Hed assumed that, but . . . Would he have set up the crime and then come to America . . . ? Why do such a thing? According to the statement that secretary had made, hed not even pumped her very hard for information. Instead it had been a basic get-away-with-your-lover weekend. The technique was a classic one. First, seduce the target. Second, determine if you can get information from her (usually him the way Western intelligence services handled sexual recruitments, but the other way around for the Eastern bloc). Third, firm up the relationshipand then use it. If Ritter understood the evidence properly, Cortez hadnt yet gotten to the point . . .

It wasnt Cortez at all, was it? Hed probably forwarded what information he had as a matter of course, not knowing about the FBI operation against the Cartels money operations. He hadnt been there when the decision to whack the Director had been made. And he would have recommended against it. Why lash out when you have just developed a good intel source? No, that wasnt professional at all.

So, Flix, how do you feel about all this? Ritter would have traded much for the ability to ask that question, though the answer was plain enough. Intelligence officers were regularly betrayed by their political superiors. It wouldnt be the first time for him, but hed be angry just the same. Just as angry as Ritter was with Admiral Cutter.

For the first time, Ritter found himself wondering what Cortez was really doing. Probably he had simply defected away from Cuba and made a mercenary of himself. The Cartel had hired him on for his training and experience, thinking that they were buying just another mercenarya very good one to be sure, but a mercenary nonetheless. Just like they bought local copshell, American copsand politicians. But a police officer wasnt the same thing as a professional spook educated at Moscow Center. He was giving them his advice, and hed think they had betrayed himwell, acted very stupidly, because killing Emil Jacobs had been an act of emotion, not of reason.

Why didnt I see that before! Ritter growled at himself. The answer: because not seeing had given him an excuse to do something hed always wanted to do. He hadnt thought because somehow hed known that thinking would have prevented him from taking action.

Cortez wasnt a terrorist, was he? He was an intelligence officer. Hed worked with the Macheteros because hed been assigned to the job. Before that his experience had been straight espionage, and merely because hed worked with that loony Puerto Rican group, theyd just assumed . . . That was probably one reason why hed defected.

It was clearer now. The Cartel had hired Cortez for his expertise and experience. But in doing so they had adopted a pet wolf. And wolves made for dangerous pets, didnt they?

For the moment there was one thing he could do. Ritter summoned an aide and instructed him to take the best frame they had of Cortez, run it through the photo-enhancing computer, and forward it to the FBI. That was something worth doing, so long as they isolated the figure from the background, but that was just another task for the imaging computer.

Admiral Cutter remained at his White House office while the President was away in the western Maryland hills. Hed fly up every day for his usual morning briefingdelivered at a somewhat later hour while the President was on his vacation regimebut for the most part hed stay here. He had his own duties, one of which was being a senior administration official. ASAO, as he thought of the title, was his name when he gave off-the-record press briefings. Such information was a vital part of presidential policymaking, all part of an elaborate game played by the government and the press: Official Leaking. Cutter would send up trial balloons, what people in the consumer-products business called test-marketing. When the President had a new idea that he was not too sure about, Cutteror the appropriate cabinet secretary, each of whom was also an ASAOwould speak on background, and a story would be written in the major papers, allowing Congress and others to react to the idea before it was given an official presidential imprimatur. It was a way for elected officials and other players in the Washington scene to dance and posture without the need for anyone to lose facean Oriental concept that translated well inside the confines of the Capital Beltway.

Bob Holtzman, the senior White House correspondent for one of the Washington papers, settled into his chair opposite Cutter for the deep-background revelations. The rules were fully understood by both sides. Cutter could say anything he wished without fear that his name, title, or the location of his office would be used. Holtzman would feel free to write the story any way he wished, within reason, so long as he did not compromise his source to anyone except his editor. Neither man especially liked the other. Cutters distaste for journalists was about the only thing he still had in common with his fellow military officers, though he was certain that he concealed it. He thought them all, especially the one before him now, to be lazy, stupid people who couldnt write and didnt think. Holtzman felt that Cutter was the wrong man in the wrong placethe reporter didnt like the idea of having a military officer giving such intimate advice to the President; more importantly, he thought Cutter was a shallow, self-serving apple-polisher with delusions of grandeur, not to mention an arrogant son of a bitch who looked upon reporters as a semiuseful form of domesticated vulture. As a result of such thoughts, they got along rather well.

You going to be watching the convention next week? Holtzman asked.

I try not to concern myself with politics, Cutter replied. Coffee?

Right! the reporter told himself. No, thanks. What the hells going on down in coca land?

Your guess is as good aswell, thats not true. Weve had the bastards under surveillance for some time. My guess is that Emil was killed by one faction of the Cartelno surprisebut without their having made a really official decision. The bombing last night might be indicative of a faction fight inside the organization.

Well, somebodys pretty pissed, Holtzman observed, scribbling notes on his pad under his personal heading for Cutter. A Senior Administration Official was transcribed as ASOl. The word is that the Cartel contracted M-19 to do the assassination, and that the Colombians really worked over the one they caught.

Maybe they did.

Howd they know that Director Jacobs was going down?

I dont know, Cutter replied.

Really? You know that his secretary tried to commit suicide. The Bureau isnt talking at all, but I find that a remarkable coincidence.

Whos running the case over there? Believe it or not, I dont know.

Dan Murray, a deputy assistant director. Hes not actually doing the field work, but hes the guy reporting to Shaw.

Well, thats not my turf. Im looking at the overseas aspects of the case, but the domestic stuff is in another office, Cutter pointed out, erecting a stone wall that Holtzman couldnt breach.

So the Cartel was pretty worked up about Operation TARPON, and some senior people acted without the approval of the whole outfit to take Jacobs out. Other members, you say, think that their action was precipitous and decided to eliminate those who put out the contract?

Thats the way it looks now. You have to understand, our intel on this is pretty thin.

Our intel is always pretty thin, Holtzman pointed out.

You can talk to Bob Ritter about that. Cutter set his coffee mug down.

Right. Holtzman smiled. If there were two people in Washington whom you could trust never to leak anything, it was Bob Ritter and Arthur Moore. What about Jack Ryan?

Hes just settling in. Hes been in Belgium all week anyway, at the NATO intel conference.

There are rumbles on The Hill that somebody ought to do something about the Cartel, that the attack on Jacobs was a direct attack on I watch C-SPAN, too, Bob. Talk is cheap.

And what Governor Fowler said this morning . . . ?

Ill leave politics to the politicians.

You know that the price of coke is up on the street?

Oh? Im not in that market. Is it? Cutter hadnt heard that yet. Already . . .

Not much, but some. Theres word on the street that incoming shipments are off a little.

Glad to hear it.

But no comment? Holtzman asked. Youre the one whos been saying that this is a for-real war and we ought to treat it as such.

Cutters smile froze on his face for a moment. The President decides about things like war.

What about Congress?

Well, that, too, but since Ive been in government service there hasnt been a congressional declaration along those lines.

How would you feel personally if we were involved in that bombing?

I dont know. We werent involved. The interview wasnt going as planned. What did Holtzman know?

That was a hypothetical, the reporter pointed out.

Okay. We go off the recordcompletelyat this point. Hypothetically, we could kill all the bastards and I wouldnt shed many tears. How about you?

Holtzman snorted. Off the record, I agree with you. I grew up here. I can remember when it was safe to walk the streets. Now I look at the body count every morning and wonder if Im in D.C. or Beirut. So it wasnt us, then?

Nope. Looks more like the Cartel is shaking itself out. Thats speculation, but its the best we have at the moment.

Fair enough. I suppose I can make a story out of that.

Discoveries IT WAS AMAZING. But it was also true. Cortez had been there for over an hour. There were six armed men with him, and a dog that sniffed around for signs of the people who had assaulted this processing site. The empty cartridge cases were mostly of the 5.56mm round now used by most of the NATO countries and their surrogates all over the world, but which had begun as the .223 Remington sporting cartridge. In America. There were also a number of 9mm cases, and a single empty hull from a 40mm grenade launcher. One of the attackers had been wounded, perhaps severely. The method of the attack was classic, a fire unit uphill and an assault group on the same level, to the north. Theyd left hastily, not booby-trapping the bodies as had happened in two other cases. Probably because of the injured man, Cortez judged. Also because they knewsuspected? No, they probably knewthat two men had gotten away to summon help.

Definitely more than one team was roaming the mountains. Maybe three or four, judging by the number and location of sites that had so far been attacked. That eliminated M-19. There werent enough trained men in that organization to do something like thisnot without his hearing of it, he corrected himself. The Cartel had done more than suborn the local guerrilla factions. It also had paid informants in each unit, something the Colombian government had signally failed to do.

So, he told himself, now you have probable American covertaction teams working in the hills. Who and what are they? Probably soldiers, or very high-quality mercenaries. More likely the for mer. The international mercenary community wasnt what it had once beenand truthfully had never been especially effective. Cortez had been to Angola and seen what African troops were like. Mercenaries hadnt had to be all that effective to defeat them, though that was now changing along with everything else in the world.

Whoever they were, theyd be far awayfar enough that he didnt feel uncomfortable at the moment, though hed leave the hunting to others. Cortez was an intelligence officer, and had no illusions about being a soldier. For now, he gathered his evidence almost like a policeman. The rifle and machine-gun cartridges, he saw, came from a single manufacturer. He didnt have such information committed to memory, but he noted that the 9mm cases had the same lot codesstamped on the case headsas those hed gotten from one of the airfields on Colombias northern coast. The odds against that being a coincidence were pretty high, he thought. So whoever had been watching the airfields had moved here . . . ? How would that have been done? The simple way would be by truck or bus, but that was a little too simple; thats how M-19 would have done it. Too great a risk for Americans, however. The yanquis would use helicopters. Staging from where? A ship, perhaps, or more likely one of their bases in Panama. He knew of no American naval exercises within helicopter range of the coast. Therefore a large aircraft capable of midair refueling. Only the Americans did that. And it would have to be based in Panama. And he had assets in Panama. Cortez pocketed the cartridges and started walking down the hill. Now he had a starting place, and that was all someone with his training needed.

Ryans VC-20Athinking of it as his airplane still required a stretch of the imaginationlifted off from the airfield outside Mons in the early afternoon. His first official foray into the big leagues of the international intelligence business had gone well. His paper on the Soviets and their activities in Eastern Europe had met with general approval and agreement, and hed been gratified to learn that the analysis chiefs of all the NATO intelligence agencies held exactly the same opinion of the changes in their enemys policies as he did: nobody knew what the hell was going on. There were theories ranging all the way from the peace-is-breaking-out-and-now-what-do-we-do? view to the equally unlikely its-all-a-trick opinion, but when it came down to doing a formal intelligence estimate, people whod been in the business since before Jack was born just shook their heads and muttered into their beerexactly what Ryan did some of the time. The really good news for the year, of course, was the signal success that the counterintelligence groups had had turning KGB operations throughout Europe, and while CIA had not told anyone (except Sir Basil, whod been there when the plan had been hatched) exactly how that had come about, the Agency enjoyed considerable prestige for its work in that area. The bottom line that Jack had often cited in the investment business was fairly clear: militarily NATO was in its best-ever condition, its security services were riding higher than anyone thought possibleit was just that the alliances overall mission was now in doubt politically. To Ryan that looked like success, so long as politicians didnt let things go to their heads, which was enough of a caveat for anyone.

So there was a lot to smile about as the Belgian countryside fell farther and farther below him until it looked like a particularly attractive quilt from Pennsylvania Dutch country. At least on the actual NATO side.

Possibly the truest testimony to NATOs present happy condition, however, was that talk around the banquet tables and over coffee in the break periods between the plenary sessions was not on business as most of the conference attendees normally viewed it. Intelligence analysts from Germany and Italy, Britain and Norway, Denmark and Portugal, all of them expressed their concern at the growing problems of drugs in their countries. The Cartels activities were expanding eastward, no longer content with marketing their wares to America alone. The intelligence professionals had noted the assassination of Emil Jacobs and the rest and wondered aloud if international narcoterrorism had taken a wholly new and dangerous turnand what had to be done about it. The French, with their history of vigorous action to protect their land, were especially approving of the bomb blast outside Medellin, and nonplussed by Ryans puzzled and somewhat exasperating response: No comment. I dont know anything. Their reaction to that was predictable, of course. Had an equivalent French official been so publicly murdered, DGSE would have mounted an immediate operation. It was something the French were especially good at. It was something that the French media and, more to the point, the French people understood and approved. And so the DGSE representatives had expected Ryan to respond with a knowing smile to accompany his lack of comment, not blank embarrassment. That wasnt part of the game as it was played in Europe, and just another odd thing about the Americans for their Old World allies to ponder. Must they be so unpredictable? they would ask themselves. Being that way to the Russians had strategic value, but not to ones allies.

And not to its own government officials, Ryan thought. What the hell is going on?

Being three thousand miles from home had given Jack a properly detached perspective to the affair. In the absence of a viable legal mechanism to deal with such crimes, maybe direct action was the right thing to do. Challenge directly the power of a nation-state and you risked a direct response from that nation-state. If we could bomb a foreign country for sponsoring action against American soldiers in a Berlin disco, then why not kill people on the territory of a fellow American democracy?

What about that political dimension?

That was the rub, wasnt it? Colombia had its own laws. It wasnt Libya, ruled by a comic-opera figure of dubious stability. It wasnt Iran, a vicious theocracy ruled by a bitter testimonial to the skill of gerontologists. Colombia was a country with real democratic traditions, one that had put its own institutions at risk, fighting to protect the citizens of another land fromthemselves.

What the hell are we doing?

Right and wrong assumed different values at this level of statecraft, didnt they? Or did they? What were the rules? What was the law? Were there any of either? Before he could answer those questions, Ryan knew that hed have to learn the facts. That would be hard enough. Jack settled back into his comfortable seat and looked down at the English Channel, widening out like a funnel as the aircraft headed west toward Lands End. Beyond that lonely point of ship-killing rocks lay the North Atlantic, and beyond that lay home. He had seven hours to decide what he should do once he got there. Seven whole hours, Jack thought, wondering how many times he could ask himself the same questions, and how many times hed only come up with new questions instead of answers.

Law was a trap, Murray told himself. It was a goddess to worship, a lovely bronze lady who held up her lantern in the darkness to show one the way. But what if the way led nowhere? They now had a dead-bang case against the one suspect in the assassination of the Director. The Colombians had gotten the confession and its thirty single-spaced pages of text were lying on his desk. There was ample physical evidence, which had been duly processed through the Bureaus legendary forensic laboratories. There was just one little problem. The extradition treaty the United States had with Colombia was not operative at the moment. Colombias Supreme Courtmore precisely, those justices who remained alive after twelve of their colleagues had been murdered by M-19 raiders not so long ago; all of whom, coincidentally, had been supporters of the extradition treaty before their violent deathshad decided that the treaty was somehow in opposition to their countrys constitution. No treaty. No extradition. The assassin would be tried locally and doubtless sent away for a lengthy prison term, but at the very least Murray and the Bureau wanted him caged in Marion, Illinoisthe maximum-security federal prison for really troublesome offenders; Alcatraz without the ambienceand the Justice Department thought it could make a case for invoking the death statute that related to drug-related murders. Butthe confession the Colombians had gotten hadnt exactly followed with American rules of evidence, and, the lawyers admitted, might be thrown out by an American judge; which would eliminate the death penalty. And the guy who took out the Director of the FBI might actually become something of a celebrity at Marion, Illinois, most of whose prisoners did not regard the FBI with the same degree of affection accorded by most U.S. citizens. The same thing, hed learned the day before, was true of the Pirates Case. Some tricky bastard of a defense lawyer had uncovered what the Coast Guard had pulled, blowing that death case away also. And the only good news around was that Murray was sure his government had struck back in a way that was highly satisfying, but fell under the general legal category of cold-blooded murder.

It worried Dan Murray that he did view that development as good news. It wasnt the sort of thing that theyd lectured himand he had later lectured othersabout during his stint as a student and later an instructor at the FBI Academy, was it? What happened when governments broke the law? The textbook answer was anarchyat least thats what happened when it became known that the government was breaking its own laws. But that was the really operative definition of a criminal, wasnt itone who got caught breaking the law.

No, Murray told himself quietly. Hed spent his life following that light because on dark nights that one beacon of sanity was all society had. His mission and the Bureaus was to enforce the laws of his country faithfully and honestly. There was leewaythere had to be, because the written words couldnt anticipate everythingbut when the letter of the law was insufficient one was guided by the principle upon which the law was based. Maybe the situation wasnt always a satisfying one, but it beat the alternative, didnt it? But what did you do when the law didnt work? Was that just part of the game, too? Was it, after all was said and done, just a game?

Clark held a somewhat different view. Law had never been his concernat least not his immediate concern. To him legal meant that something was okay, not that some legislators had drafted a set of rules, and that some President or other had signed it. To him it meant that the sitting President had decided that the continued existence of someone or something was contrary to the best interests of his country. His government service had begun in the United States Navy as part of the SEALs, the Navys elite, secretive commandos. In that tight, quiet community hed made himself a name that was still spoken with respect: Snake, theyd called him, because you couldnt hear his footsteps. To the best of his knowledge, no enemy had ever seen him and lived to tell the tale. His name had been different then, of course, but only because after leaving the Navy hed made the mistakehe truly thought of it as a mistake, but only in the technical senseof applying his skills on a free-agent basis. And done quite well, of course, until the police had discovered his identity. The lesson from that adventure was that while people didnt really investigate happenings on the battlefield, they did elsewhere, requiring far greater circumspection on his part. A foolish error in retrospect, one result of his almost-discovery by a local police force was that hed come to the attention of CIA, which occasionally needed people with his unique skills. It was even something of a joke: When theres killing to be done, get someone who kills for a living. At least it had been funny back then, almost twenty years earlier.

Others decided who needed to die. Those others were the properly selected representatives of the American people, whom hed served in one way or another for most of his adult life. The law, as hed once bothered to find out, was that there was no law. If the President said kill, then Clark was merely the instrument of properly defined government policy, all the more so now, since selected members of Congress had to agree with the executive branch. The rules which from time to time prohibited such acts were Executive Orders from the Presidents office, which orders the President could freely violateor more precisely, redefine to suit the situation. Of course, Clark did very little of that. Mainly his jobs for the Agency involved his other skillsgetting in and out of places without being detected, for example, at which he was the best guy around. But killing was the reason hed been hired in the first place, and for Clark, whod been baptized John Terrence Kelly at St. Ignatius Parish in Indianapolis, Indiana, it was simply an act of war sanctioned both by his country and also by his religion, about which he was moderately serious. Vietnam had never been granted the legal sanction of a declared war, after all, and if killing his countrys enemies back then had been all right, why not now? Murder to the renamed John T. Clark was killing people without just cause. Law he left to lawyers, in the knowledge that his definition of just cause was far more practical, and far more effective.

His immediate concern was his next target. He had two more days of availability on the carrier battle group, and he wanted to stage another stealth-bombing if he could.

Clark was domiciled in a frame house in the outskirts of Bogot, a safe house the CIA had set up a decade earlier, officially owned by a corporate front and generally rented out commercially to visiting American businessmen. It had no obvious special features. The telephone was ordinary until he attached a portable encrypting devicea simple one that wouldnt have passed muster in Eastern Europe, but sufficient for the relatively low-intercept threat down hereand he also had a satellite dish that operated just fine through a not very obvious hole in the roof and also ran through an encrypting system that looked much the same as a portable cassette player.

So what to do next? he asked himself. The Untiveros bombing had been carefully executed to look like a car bomb. Why not another, a real one? The trick was setting it up to scare hell out of the intended targets, flushing them into a better target area. To accomplish that it had to appear an earnest attempt, but at the same time it couldnt be earnest enough to injure innocent people. That was the problem with car bombs.

Low-order detonation? he thought. That was an idea. Make the bomb look like an earnest attempt that fizzled. Too hard to do, he decided.