Blood gushed from the mangled hand. Staring into the suppressor of the auto-Colt, the Iranian raised his hands and pleaded.

"Please... I Rouhani, leader of Revolutionary Guards. No kill, please! No!"

Lyons kicked Rouhani in the head, stunning him. As the Iranian cried and babbled in Arabic, Lyons flipped him onto his face. He used the plastic loops of riot cuffs as tourniquets on his forearm and above his gory knee. Then he linked the tourniquet on his right forearm to his left arm with another loop of space-age plastic, effectively immobilizing the maimed Iranian terrorist. Lyons spoke into his hand radio, "Got the Iranian. Claims he's a leader. You see where the black creep went?"

"Into the fires," Blancanales replied. "He's dodging over to the road, up against the foot of the hill."

"Where you can't hit him..."

"He thinks..."

"Don't. But slow him down."

Unslinging his Konzak, Lyons ran through the smoke and blackened brush of the gully. An Iranian hiding in the weeds turned. His eyes didn't register the black-uniformed, black-faced American for an instant, then he jerked up his Kalashnikov.

But far too late. Blasts of steel shot tore away his hands, destroying the AK he held, the shots continuing through his arms to scramble his guts, the second blast spraying Number Two and double 0 shot through his lungs and heart. Thrown back by the impact, already dead, the Iranian collapsed in a bloodied heap as Lyons continued past without breaking stride.

Leaving the gully, Lyons continued through the clouds of black smoke stinking of rubber and plastic and flesh. To his left, flames and smoke rose from the gutted hulks of the trucks and plane. To his right, the buildings of the ranch burned.

Squinting against the smoke and heat, he saw tracers skipping off the hillside. The black terrorist dodged from cover to cover. Sometimes smoke from the burning hillside brush screened him. In front of the terrorist, the crashed truck and trailer continued to burn.

The black terrorist chanced the open ground. Lyons saw him zigzagging to cover. Sprinting diagonally across the corner of the airstrip, Lyons dived into a ditch. He laid his Konzak within reach and unholstered his auto-Colt. Flipping down the left-hand grip lever, Lyons braced the heavy pistol on the edge of the ditch and waited.

Rising from a shadow, the black man ran toward the road.

Twenty meters to his side, flame exploded from the trailer. Torn aluminum and scraps of metal tumbled across the open ground, carried along by a tremendous jet of fire.

A rocket hurtled through the opposite side of the trailer, tearing through the aluminum. Shooting out a tail of flame, the rocket spun wildly through the night and exploded. Other rockets flashed simultaneously, their launching jets coming in one wave of superheated gases and vaporized aluminum, every combustible thing near the wrecked truck and trailer suddenly burning.

The black man, who had conspired with foreign terrorists to assassinate the President of the United States, stood in an incandescent wind. Lyons saw the man's clothing flame away, then his flesh, bones suddenly visible in that instant of cremation. Lyons went flat in the ditch.

Flames and shredded metal continued streaking into the rancho, burning what had not yet burned, charring the dead. Rockets flew wildly from the trailer, then the trailer exploded in a giant fireball.

Metal and flaming solid propellant fell around Lyons. When he looked up, nothing remained.

Two days later, in the devastated village of the Bekaa Valley, a messenger delivered a message to the desk of Colonel Dastgerdi. The Syrian officer waited until the soldier left his office, then tore open the envelope. The one-line communication read, "They defeated the puppets."

Colonel Dastgerdi carefully burned both the typed page and the envelope, then scattered the ashes.

The Americans had taken his pawn. Now he would take their President.