Coleman was to bring the Jansens back to Washington, whether they wanted to come or not, and killing them was to be avoided if at all possible. They had talked the night before about jumping the Jansens at dawn. Stroble had pointed out that they'd been traveling for the better part of a day and would be tired and disoriented. His vote was to hit them at first light and get it over with. Nothing cute. Strap on the body armor, tactical vests, and goggles, grab the silenced MP-5s and a few flash-bangs, and bust down the front door. This was classic Stroble. Hit the target hard, and hit it fast.

Hackett saw very little virtue in his mend's plan. Plus, he was still getting his bad vibe. Coleman, for his part, was intent on returning to Washington with his two men and the Jansens. He wanted everyone alive and no one in Evergreen the wiser that three very lethal individuals had spent a night in their perfect little town.

The former SEAL Team Six commander knew from experience that once you started setting off flash-bangs and breaking down doors, things could get out of hand. Plus, they weren't dealing with a couple of teenage rag-heads. The Jansens were highly trained army commandos, and they were on their home turf. They would surely have weapons nearby, and this was what really bothered Coleman. He and his men weren't trained in policing action. They were trained to kill. It had been hammered into them during thousands of hours of close-quarters battle, or CQB as it was known in the counterterrorism trade. If someone had a gun, they were trained to shoot them in the head, not the arm. Three shots to the head, and then move on to the next target. It was not hard for Coleman to envision a scenario where one of the Jansens, or both, reached for a weapon in the middle of the raid. If that happened, the Jansens would be dead, and there was a chance, though a slim one, that one of them would also get shot. Nope, thought Coleman. There was no reason to get anyone killed.

It was getting light now. The sun was still not up, but he could see the Jansens' house clearly. Coleman looked behind him. Hanging from the wall of the cabin was a circular white thermometer with a mountain lion in the middle. The temperature was a crisp fifty-two degrees. Coleman stretched his arms above his head and looked at his watch. It was 6:02, time to wake up Hackett and let him keep an eye on things for a few hours. As Coleman stood, he looked down for one last check. He was about to head into the cabin when the front door of the Jansens' house opened, and a man walked out. Coleman snatched the binoculars from the table and brought Jim Jansen into focus just before he entered the detached two-car garage.

This was a little unexpected. In the still mountain air, Coleman could hear the car start even though it was more than a half a mile away. Next came the brake lights, and then the car backed out of the garage. Coleman walked quickly to the sliding glass door and flung it open. «Get your asses up, you two! Jansen's on the move.» Coleman went back to the railing and watched as the Subaru station wagon turned around in the driveway. Jansen got out, opened the back hatch, and then ran back into the house, leaving the car running. Coleman started for the living room. He didn't like what he saw.

PETER CAMERON WASN'T the only person who thought of logging onto the Internet to check up on what had happened in Germany. At one in the morning, Jim Jansen had signed onto his AOL account. His wife was sound asleep, but he was restless. They had just made a lot of money, and he wanted to go someplace remote and warm, so he and his wife could relax. Jansen knew Kennedy would want to debrief them. That was all part of the plan. Since Iron Man wasn't around, there wouldn't be anybody else to contradict their story. After the debriefing, they would have to go someplace nice and hide out for a few weeks. The work that he and his wife did paid great, but it was absolutely draining. Looking back on it, he could honestly say if they were offered the same amount of money to do this job again, they would turn it down. Iron Man had made him nervous. The man had sensed that something was up, despite all of the planning they had done. His wife had told him in detail about what had happened in the house – the way Iron Man had shot Hagenmiller and disabled the bodyguard. They had been lucky that Beth had killed him so easily.

Jansen started with the London Times. The European press would have had a full day to cover the story, and he figured there was a decent chance that the Times might mention the assassination of Count Hagenmiller in its Sunday edition. When the German authorities figured out that Iron Man was an American, the story would be frontpage news everywhere, but that would take a while.

Jansen was pleasantly surprised to find the headline «Germans Believe Count Was Assassinated» plastered across the front page. He couldn't help feeling a little excited over the high-profile treatment of the case. By the second paragraph, the excitement was replaced by confusion. There was no fire when they had left the estate. By the fifth paragraph, the confusion had deepened, and by the end of the article, it had been replaced entirely by fear.

He had followed the story right up to the point where it said a man and a woman posing as BKA agents had left the estate in a maroon Audi sedan at approximately 11:15 P.M. and had not been seen since. Then there was the mention of a third individual who left approximately five minutes later in a car that was stolen from one of the guests attending the count's party. Jansen's heartbeat picked up as he read on. The stolen car had been tracked to the Hanover airport. From there, the article jumped to a cab driver who was found bound and gagged in a hotel in Freiburg, Germany. Based on the detailed account that the driver had given the police, there could be little doubt that the man who had held him at gunpoint was none other than Iron Man.

Jansen had raced into the bedroom in a panic and got his wife up. He asked her again exactly where she had shot the operative they knew only as Iron Man. It didn't take long for the two of them to figure out that he must have been wearing a bulletproof vest and had not told them. It was a stupid mistake. Jim Jansen wanted to strangle his wife for not putting a third bullet in the man's head. This was the exact reason he was supposed to be the trigger man.

What they had to do was glaringly obvious. They had to run, and they had to run fast and far. When the man they had ambushed in Germany made his way back to the United States, he would tell Irene Kennedy everything, and she would understandably give him all the information he needed to track them down. Jim Jansen had very little doubt about the outcome of that confrontation. The Jansens would last right up until they gave up who had hired them, and then they would be killed the proper way – a bullet to the head.

WHILE JIM AND Beth Jansen raced around their house gathering the things they would need for quite possibly the rest of their lives, they didn't realize that there was a far more imminent threat sitting in room ten of the Buffalo Bill Motel. Peter Cameron had listened to every word the Jansens uttered, and it had given him ample time to plan and get things into place. With a little luck and cooperation from the Jansens, he would be back in Washington by noon.

Cameron was extremely efficient with virtually every firearm there was. It didn't matter if it was a pistol, a shotgun, or a rifle. In his early twenties, he had gone to a gun club in rural Virginia with another employee of the CIA and was exposed to competition shooting for the first time. Over a period of years, this had turned from a passion into an obsession. Cameron was the top pistol shooter in his club and one of the best on the East Coast. He was very proficient at skeet shooting and was deadly accurate with a rifle. All of this shooting, however, was done under controlled conditions.