‘Sentries covering the front and back of the house. No windows to the side of the house,’ whispers Broker.

They settle down and try to pick up any noise, but either the mics are not powerful enough or the house is well insulated, and they hear nothing. In the middle floor only one blob is pacing; the others are stationary, with two blobs next to one another. Broker taps the two blobs, pulls up his watch, and starts to time the sentries.

‘They alternate from back to front every ten minutes. Pause in front of each window, look around, and then walk back. No head popping out of a window, which is good for us, bad for them. As usual, good help is always hard to come by. One sentry either at the top or bottom is always covering the two sides. We need final confirmation, and I don’t see how we’re going to get that unless we can hear or see them.’

Broker looks at him sideways. ‘Uh-oh, don’t even think of going in the garden on a recon round. Suicide missions are so last week. They could be looking out the windows, and pop goes the weasel!’

Zeb opens Broker’s backpack, removes an earbud and collar mic, and puts them on. He hands another pair to Broker, who gives a long-suffering sigh and does the same.

‘Where?’ he asks Broker.

Broker shakes his head. ‘Cross Keys, not far from here. Driving directions are keyed in.’ He waves in the direction of the Hummer.

Zeb takes the keys and sets off, pointing in the direction of his earbud and collar mic in response to Broker’s urgent, ‘How will I know when you’re back?’

Broker settles into the darkness, takes out a range finder from his kit, and checks out the range to Holt’s house even though he has gauged the distance down to the last inch. He assembles the AWM, sights, zeros it, and lays it down again.

He then calls Bear and briefs him on the situation and in return hears an earful of curses. ‘Hold your horses. I did tell him, but you know him. Once he has a plan in mind, only changed circumstances deter him. No, you stay there.’

*   *   *

Zeb reaches Cross Keys airport and finds a Super Otter waiting for him, with its pilot leaning against the fuselage.

‘You Zeb Carter?’

Zeb nods.

‘Broker told me about what you want done. Have you done this before? It’s foolhardy to–’

Zeb waves him off, signs the disclaimer papers, and checks out the kit that the pilot has brought for him.

‘Dude, you do know what you’re doing, don’t you?’ the pilot asks, conscious of lawsuits.

Zeb ignores him and unfolds the kit and lays it on the tarmac. He inspects it fully and then folds it carefully and takes it inside the plane. The pilot has unfolded an aerial map of Williamstown and is tracing their route when Zeb rejoins him.

‘This is where I want to be,’ Zeb tells him, pointing to the exact location.

The pilot does his calculations. ‘You’re lucky it’s not very windy, but it is dark.’

‘Dark is good. Let’s go.’

The Super Otter roars to life in the stillness of the night and takes off after a short taxiing run. The pilot swings wide away from Williamstown and climbs to 13,000 feet and then takes a long circle back to Williamstown.

The pilot looks over his shoulder when he’s twenty miles away from Williamstown.

He sees Batman.

Zeb and Broker had discussed the best way to approach and enter Holt’s house and had eventually agreed, though Broker would vehemently deny it, on a wing-suit jump. The unknowns were too many to risk any other kind of approach. Holt was likely to have access to sophisticated surveillance, and the closeness of the neighborhood made even a covert approach risky. The one factor that finally got Broker to agree to what he thought was a suicidal approach was Holt’s personality. They just didn’t know enough about Holt to risk being detected in any other approach. For all they knew, Holt would kill Lauren and Rory and go down shooting, since he’d no longer have anything to lose.

Zeb has strapped up the US Special Forces wing suit that Broker has mysteriously procured and puts on the backpack that contains the square canopy parachute, reserve chute, and oxygen bottles, and adjusts the shoulder and leg straps. He then dons the helmet, adjusts the oxygen mask receivers, and after checking the suit instruments, asks the pilot the wind velocity and direction. The pilot shouts back at him and then warns him they are fifteen miles away from Williamstown.

Zeb pushes open the door of the aircraft, causing the aircraft to judder before the pilot brings it under control, steadies himself on the frame, and waits for the pilot’s signal.

The pilot steadies the aircraft, and when they hit a patch of clear sky, he lifts his thumb to Zeb.

Zeb dives into the dark and spreads the suit wide open to steady himself once clear of the plane.

In the distance he sees the taillights of the aircraft disappearing, and below, vast emptiness. The suit has a glide ratio of 3:1 and is fully equipped with a navigation system, altimeter and various gadgets to help the flight. Zeb has already fallen a thousand feet since his jump and is eleven miles from Williamstown.

At a hundred and twenty-five miles per hour, with the wind rushing in his face, darkness around him, he is alone in the universe, but then, Zeb has been alone all his life.

He plans his landing and every step he will take once he lands. After a few minutes he can see lights far below and, ahead of him, pinpricks piercing the dark, playing hide and seek with the clouds.

He steers in their direction, guided by the navigation system, and sets himself up a glide path. There is a mild headwind slowing his descent, but it will help him once he opens his chute. He makes a mental check of the weapons and kit he is carrying. Given the wing-suit approach, he has had to be very selective in what he can carry, just a couple of handguns, a knife, his cable camera, and night-vision goggles.

His suit starts beeping when he’s four thousand feet away, indicating that he is nearing the chute-opening altitude. He opens his chute at three thousand five hundred and feels the kick on his back and the slowing down of his speed as it unfolds without any hitches. He can see it above his head, a dark shadow in the surrounding darkness. Below, Williamstown is growing with every second, the lights and the town becoming clearer with every foot he falls.

He enlarges the map on the navigation system and starts toggling the chute across to move above Holt’s house. There’s a slight headwind he has to compensate for, and he descends vertically. From his surveillance and topography, he knows that the roof of Holt’s house isn’t surrounded by trees, so all he has to do is land soundlessly on a sloping roof. He can imagine Broker snorting at that – he has had far more difficult landings than this on other missions.

He clears his mind and focuses on the fast-approaching terrain below, now sharp and clear; the street lighting casting a yellow glow, a flame Zeb is rushing toward.

Zeb toggles the chute gently until he’s dropping slowly over the roof of Holt’s house, bends his knees, pulls both brakes, and steps out of the sky onto the house, balancing himself on the incline of the roof. He quickly unstraps the chute, pulls it down, and crumples it to its smallest. The wing suit joins the chute as he steps out of it, dressed now in his hunting gear, all black with his guns and knife strapped across his body. From his backpack he takes a long cord that he wraps around the wing suit and chute, and ties both to the chimney so that they don’t flap in the night or fall down to the ground and draw attention from within.

He double-clicks his collar mic, waits for Broker to respond and, when he does, double-clicks again to signal over and out.

He wraps another rope around the chimney of the house, wraps the other end of it around his waist, and lowers himself down the front of the house between the windows. He lowers himself down a foot and stops immediately. In all their planning, Broker and he had overlooked a simple and now glaring fact – the house clapboards are painted white, and Zeb is in black.