A split second later the rear glass of the car Katie was in was shattered by a gun blast.

IN A BLUR OF MOTION, Shaw erupted forward like a blitzing linebacker, knocking both men to the ground. In another instant his pistol was stuffed nearly down one man’s throat as his partner lay unconscious next to him.

A moment later the men in black swooped in.

Katie sat back up in the car, flicking glass off her. She looked anxiously over at Shaw. When he rose from the ground clutching one of the gunmen, she breathed a sigh of relief and climbed out of the car.

Twenty feet behind the car Frank stood over the dead man who’d tried to kill Katie. She joined him.

Frank said, “Sorry we cut it so close. Bastard got the shot off before we could nail him.”

Later, they sat in an empty barn outside of Wisbach. The two would-be killers were manacled together back to back in the middle of the straw floor.

Frank, Katie, and Shaw stood together in an informal powwow.

“Thanks for agreeing to back us up on this,” Shaw told Frank.

“Hey, other than keeping the world safe and secure, I’ve got lots of time on my hands.”

They’d already run the pairs’ prints through the usual databases and gotten zip for their troubles. Their interrogation so far had resulted in a cascade of foul language from the man who’d ended up chewing on Shaw’s gun barrel. By contrast, his partner, a beefy man with a stoic expression, hadn’t said a word. He looked like he might not even speak English. They’d tried several other languages out on him but his silence remained golden. They had no IDs. Two pistols and a gutting knife were the only things of interest found on their persons. The dead man had been similarly sterilized.

“Not even a cell phone,” Frank said.

“Means they were going to rendezvous with someone after they killed me and Shaw,” Katie said. “Probably close by.”

Frank turned to Shaw. “What now?”

“Keep pounding away at these two until they pop. We’ll be in touch.”

Frank put a hand on Shaw’s shoulder. “Look, Shaw, watch your back. My gut’s telling me something is off here.”

“Off how?” Katie asked.

“Off as in it seems like they’re always a step ahead of us.”

As they drove down the road Shaw said gloomily, “I was pretty sure they’d be watching Anna’s funeral in case we showed. That’s why I called in Frank for an assist. But it didn’t score us anything.”

“They might talk at some point.”

“I doubt they know much beyond being paid to kill me and you. These people have been really good about covering their tracks.”

“They’ll make a mistake. They always do,” she said confidently.

“Oh, you think so?”

“I know so.”

He stopped the car. “Why are you so sure all of sudden?”

Katie could barely contain her excitement. “Because I just thought of a brilliant way to flush them out.”

BY NOW THE ENTIRE WORLD was convinced that China was behind the Red Menace for reasons as yet unknown, and that Russia had wiped out The Phoenix Group in retaliation. And no matter how many denials issued from Beijing and Moscow, this belief remained largely unshaken.

Elaborate theories were cropping up everywhere, in both digital and real ink, as to why China would have done such a thing. They ranged from wanting to turn the world against the only country in Asia that was a true rival both economically and militarily to China’s ascension to the top spot in the global pecking order, to fears in Beijing that Russia’s slide back to autocracy posed a real threat to the region’s stability. How making Russia even angrier and more dangerous than it supposedly was would alleviate that threat was still a puzzle. Yet when people wanted to believe something badly enough facts and logic never proved to be difficult obstacles.

Whatever the reason, it was true that both nations were now mobilizing. The two countries shared an enormous border to the east of Mongolia, along with a much smaller wedge of land between Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Russian army units along with armor and air support were being marshaled at both of these sites. It was also rumored that Gorshkov was contemplating going straight through Mongolia in a planned invasion of China, which would have made it a much shorter route to Beijing, despite some political and topographical problems. The Chinese, knowing this full well, had set up thick walls of men and machines at each of these points. Yet war did not seem imminent. Indeed, it was clear that both countries well knew that such a contest would result in them both losing, so closely matched were they. But it was also believed, though no public statement had been made, that both China and Russia had signed long-term deals with unnamed defense contractors to rearm so that if they indeed did go to war years from now, they could each wipe out the other in grandly impressive style.

In response to these developments, many Western countries, the United States included, were doing the same thing, namely rearming. The Pentagon, always unafraid it make its intentions public, announced that the Ares Corporation, taking the lead position with several other major defense contractors in tow, had been awarded a series of no-bid contracts that had long been percolating to rebuild its tank and artillery divisions, upgrade its electronic intelligence-gathering infrastructure, reconfigure its missile defense systems, retool several aircraft carriers, ballistic missile subs, and destroyers, bring online several thousand heavily armored personnel carriers and other troop vehicles, and upgrade the nearly brand-new, and apparently already obsolete, Raptor combat aircraft. It was only American-based Ares, the Pentagon stated, the original manufacturer of much of this weaponry, with its myriad areas of expertise and global management capability, that could carry out this enormous task to the exacting standards demanded by the U.S. military complex.

A Pentagon source said, “This will ensure that the U.S. military retains its position as the number one fighting force in the world for decades to come.”

The Congress had quickly passed a spending bill to pay for all this, which the president had just as quickly signed.

In several newspapers, a source who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to say what he was about to, reported that the Ares Corp. contracts were for eight years and added up to nearly a trillion dollars of taxpayer money. This would ratchet the U.S. military budget up to over $800 billion a year, dwarfing even annual Social Security payouts and making it by far the biggest expenditure of the budget. But, fortunately, it would not technically increase the enormous budget deficit and national debt, because some clever bureaucrats backed by equally slick members of Congress were able to get the additional defense funding pushed through on a supplemental spending bill that technically was not included in the official budget. And in Washington, D.C., technical was all that mattered.

“So the next generation can worry about reality,” remarked one political insider who requested anonymity, citing a desire to remain a political insider.

After signing the defense spending bill in a grand White House ceremony the embattled president, his reelection chances still hurting from him being painted as soft on Russia, called a press conference where he said, in the most unmistakable terms, “Now anyone seeking to harm the interests of the United States of America will find us superbly prepared to do whatever is necessary to defend ourselves to the fullest. And may God continue to bless the United States of America.” He immediately shot up eleven percentage points in the next poll. There was nothing like saber-rattling to win the voters over.