Douglas Case spun his wheelchair in a half circle to face Kingsman Helms. Then Case stabbed a button in the armrest that raised his seat hydraulically while the base extended wheeled outriggers to balance the higher center of gravity. Eye to eye with the executive, Case spoke in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Imagine this: Our doctor is trapped in a war zone in the middle of a remote island by a bloodthirsty rebel army surrounded by a vicious dictator’s army. The kind of ‘resources’ you’re spouting civilian fantasies about would blow it into a three-way war and get the doctor killed in the process.”

“I am merely—”

Case cut him off, again. “Isle de Foree is two hundred and fifty fucking miles offshore and none of the jumping-off points on the African coast are all that amenable to corporate bullshit. Corporate won’t save our guy. Quick and light will. He’s in a hell of a jam, and I don’t know anyone better qualified to get him out of it than Paul Janson. I’ll stake my job on it.”

“That’s quite an endorsement,” said Helms. “It sounds like you got the job, Paul. What’s this costing us?”

“Nothing until we produce your man. We cover our expenses. Doug gets the family rate. Five million dollars.”

“That is a lot of money.”

“Indeed it is,” said Janson.

“All right! Here are your marching orders: Save the doctor at any cost; spare nothing. ASC stands by its people. We are a family.”

“We haven’t accepted the job,” said Janson.

“What? What’s stopping you?”

“We need to know more about the circumstances. What was the doctor doing out there?”

“Doing? He was doing his job.”

“What is his name?” asked Kincaid.

Helms glanced at Doug Case, who then said, “Flannigan. Dr. Terrence Flannigan.”

Janson asked, “What was Dr. Flannigan doing on an offshore service vessel? Six-man boats don’t carry company doctors. Or was the OSV ferrying him somewhere?”

Again Helms looked to Doug Case as if the job description of a company doctor was not his concern. Case said, “We’re presuming they were ferrying him out to a rig to care for somebody who got hurt.”

“Why didn’t they helicopter the victim to shore? That’s how it is usually done.”

“Look into it, Doug,” Helms told Case. “Find out where Dr. Flannigan was going.” He showed his teeth in a grin. “Better yet, Paul, if you manage to rescue him quickly you can ask him yourself. Pleasure meeting you. And you, too, Jessica. I must go. I really do hope you take the job,” he said, and left.

“What do you say, Paul?” asked Doug Case. He was deferential all of a sudden, even pleading. Hecertainly wanted Janson to take it. Janson did not put much weight on that. People preferred working with people they knew.

“We will look into the feasibility of the operation,” he said. “You’ll have our answer in twelve hours.”

Jessica got to the door first and held it for him. But Doug Case called, “Paul, could you wait a moment? I’d like to speak with you alone.”

Janson stepped back into Case’s office and closed the door. “What’s up?”

“I really appreciate what you’re doing.”

“I will do what is feasible.”

“Once again, I owe you.”

“I told you before: If you owe anything, pay the next guy.”

“Thank you. I will do that. Now, listen, whether or not Helms is our next CEO has no bearing on this kidnap situation. Buddha is not retiring tomorrow. So don’t worry about Kingsman Helms.”

“I’m not.”

“What I told him is true. I can’t think of anyone else who could pull this off without accidentally embroiling the company in a fucking civil war. All we want is our man back. And I don’t have to tell you that it would solidify my position here.”

“If I feel I can pull it off, I will take the job.”

“Is Jessica Kincaid the sniper you told me about? The one who was the best you’d ever seen?”

“None of your business.”

“I’m only asking because I’m hoping for both our sakes that if you’re working with a woman she’s someone you’ve worked with long enough to really count on.”

“I count on her,” Janson answered patiently. “She excels at everything she turns her hand to.”

“A Machine-ette?” Case grinned.

Janson reflected momentarily. As he had told Case already, Kincaid’s operator training, mastery of the “deadly arts,” and service record were nobody’s business. But Janson saw no reason to hide his admiration. “She is a perfectionist and hungry to learn—dance, saber, telemark skiing, swimming, boxing. She takes elocution lessons from an acting coach to learn how to mimic body language, she throws herself into foreign languages most people never heard of, and she’s close to getting certified to fly jets.”

“Are we a smidgeon smitten by our protégée?”

“Awed,” said Janson. “Is there anything else? I need to get going.”

He headed for the door and had his hand on the knob when Case said, “I’ve worked with women. They’re smart. A hell of a lot smarter than we are.”

“Based on all the evidence, I agree.”

“But I never worked with a woman in the field. At least not under fire, never when the lead was flying. What’s it like?”

Janson hesitated. Doug’s question—even if he was asking in general what it was like to work with a woman—caught him off-stride. That surprised him. He was a man who reviewed his life in small ways on a constant basis. But the survival habit of compartmentalizing his thoughts and emotions and desires ran deep. Was it possible that until this moment he had never fully considered, or allowed himself to consider, how central Jessica Kincaid had become to his life as protégée, business partner, and friend?

“Do you have a dictionary in that computer?”

Case rolled across the office, lowered his chair to desk height, opened a computer window, and poised his powerful hands over the keyboard.

Janson smiled, suddenly clear in his mind. “What is it like? Look up ‘Comrade-in-arms.’”

Doug Case typed in the old-fashioned warrior phrase, scrolled down the entry, then read aloud: “ ‘An associate in friendship, occupation, fortunes’?”

“That nails it.”

“But,” Case said, “the downside I see to working with a woman is that in the clutch, when the lead is flying, it’s only natural that you’d be distracted, worried about her getting hurt. Particularly if she’s your protégée. Devoted followers have a habit of getting killed in our line of work. I’ve lost them; so have you.”

“Jessica is predator, not prey.”

* * *

DOUG CASE TOUCHED his telephone the instant the door closed behind Paul Janson.

Bill Pounds, one of his ex-Ranger ASC field agents, was watching the lobby. “Yes, sir?”

“They’re on their way. Report where they go. Don’t let them make you.”

“No one makes the invisible man.”

THREE

Bill Pounds walked quickly to his metallic-green Taurus parked in the No Parking zone. His partner, Rob, a hard-eyed moonlighting Houston Police Department detective, was at the wheel. They watched a red and white Fiesta Taxi pull up to the building’s entrance. The middle-aged businessman and the gal in the seersucker suit climbed into the cab.

The Fiesta Taxi driver had been instructed to leave his cell phone on. Pounds and Rob heard the woman say, “Brown Convention Center.”

Rob wheeled the Taurus onto the Sam Houston Tollway after them and followed at a distance. “The Brown’s got two conventions showing this week, National Association of Black Accountants and the Texas Towmen, and they don’t look like either.”

“Pass ’em,” Pounds ordered. “I’ll wait for them in the lobby.”

* * *

JESSICA KINCAID LEANED close to whisper, “What did he say?”

“Tell you later.”

Janson sat back and watched the scenery, such as it was. Outside the taxi window Houston looked hot and dry, a flat, new land empty of people and full of cars. Janson looked through it, past it, to London with crowded sidewalks, ancient stonework, and lush green Regent Park the day that Cons Ops sent Jessica Kincaid to kill him.