His earpiece buzzed with Mandarin. Zhang’s voice. Picked up by the microtransceiver. Zhang was heading back to his suite.

Painter touched his throat microphone and subvocalized into the radio. “Sanchez, how are you picking up on the feed?”

“Loud and clear, Commander.”

His co-agent on this mission, Cassandra Sanchez, was holed up in the suite across the hall from Zhang’s, manning the surveillance array.

“How is the subdermal holding?” he asked her.

“He’d better access his computer soon. The bug is running low on juice.”

Painter frowned. The “bug” had been planted yesterday on Zhang during a massage. Sanchez’s Latino features were dark enough to pass for Indian. She had implanted the subdermal transceiver during a deep-tissue massage last night, the prick of penetration unfelt as she dug her thumbs in deep. She covered the tiny puncture wound with an anesthetic smear of surgical bond. By the time the massage was over, it had sealed and dried. The digital microtransceiver had a life span of only twelve hours.

“How much time left?”

“Best estimate… eighteen minutes.”

“Damn.”

Painter focused his full attention back on his quarry’s conversation.

The man kept his voice low, meant for his bodyguards only. Painter, fluent in Mandarin, listened. He hoped Zhang would give some indication when he would retrieve the plasma weapons file. He was disappointed.

“Have the girl ready after I’ve showered,” Zhang said.

Painter tightened a fist. The “girl” was thirteen, an indentured slave from North Korea. His daughter, he had explained to those who even thought to ask. If this had been true, incest could be added to the long list of charges to which Zhang was guilty.

Following them, Painter skirted around a change booth and set off down a long bank of machines, paralleling his quarry. A jackpot rang out from a dollar slot machine. The winner, a middle-aged man in a jogging suit, smiled and looked around for someone to share his good fortune. There was only Painter.

“I won!” he cried jubilantly, eyes red-rimmed from playing all night.

Painter nodded. “More good luck, sir,” he answered, repeating the pit boss’s earlier words, and strode past the man. There were no real winners here-except the casino. The slot machines alone netted eight hundred million dollars last year. It seemed the Pequot tribe had come a long way from its 1980s sand-and-gravel business.

Unfortunately, Painter’s father had missed out on the boom, abandoning the reservation in the early eighties to pursue his fortune in New York City. It was there he met Painter’s mother, a fiery Italian woman who would eventually stab her husband to death after seven years of marriage and the birth of their son. With his mother on death row, Painter had grown up in a series of foster homes, where he quickly learned it was best to keep silent, to be unseen.

It had been his first training in stealth…but not his last.

Zhang’s group entered the Grand Pequot Tower’s elevator lobby, showing their suite key to the security guard.

Painter crossed past the opening. He had a Glock 9mm in a holster at the base of his back, covered by his casino jacket. He had to resist pulling it out and shooting Zhang in the back of the head, execution style.

But that would not achieve their objective: to recover the schematics and research for the orbital plasma cannon. Zhang had managed to steal the data from a secure federal server, leaving a worm behind. The next morning, a Los Alamos technician by the name of Harry Klein accessed the file, inadvertently releasing the data worm that proceeded to eat all references of the weapon while defecating a false trail that implicated Klein. That bit of computerized sleight of hand cost investigators two weeks as they pursued the false trail.

It had taken a dozen DARPA agents to filter through the worm shit and discover the true identity of the thief: Xin Zhang, a spy positioned as a technologist with Changnet, a telecom upstart out of Shanghai. According to the CIA’s intelligence, the stolen data was on the suitcase computer in Zhang’s suite. The hard drive had been trip-wired with an elaborate encryption defense. A single mistake in attempting to access the computer would wipe everything.

That could not be risked. Nothing had survived the worm at Los Alamos. Estimates were that the loss would set the program back by a full ten months. But the worst consequence was that the stolen research would advance China’s program by a full five years. The files contained some phenomenal breakthroughs and cutting-edge innovations. It was up to DARPA to stop it. Their objective was to gain Zhang’s password and retrieve the computer.

Time was running out.

Painter watched from the reflection in a Wheel-of-Fortune slot machine as Zhang and his bodyguards stepped into an express elevator that led to the private suites that topped the tower.

Touching his throat mike, Painter whispered, “They’re heading up.”

“Got it. Ready when you are, Commander.”

As the doors squeezed closed, Painter rushed over to a neighboring elevator. It had been crisscrossed with bright yellow tape, lettered in black:OUT OF ORDER Painter ripped through it while punching the button. As the doors parted, he ducked through. He touched his throat mike. “All clear! Go!”

Sanchez answered, “Brace yourself.”

As the elevator doors shushed closed, he leaned against the mahogany paneling, legs wide.

The car shot upward, driving him toward the floor. His muscles tensed. He watched the glowing numbers climb upward, ever faster. Sanchez had rewired this car for maximum acceleration. She had also slowed Zhang’s elevator by 24 percent, not enough to be noticed.

As Painter’s car reached the thirty-second floor, it decelerated with a shudder. He was lifted off his feet, hung in the air for a long breath, then fell back to the floor. He ducked through the doors as they opened, careful not to disturb the taped entry. He checked the neighboring elevator. Zhang’s car was three floors away and climbing.

He needed to hurry.

Painter raced down the hall of suites. He found Zhang’s room number. “How are we positioned?” he whispered.

“The girl is handcuffed to the bed. Two guards are playing cards in the main room.”

“Roger that.” Sanchez had placed pencil cameras in the room’s heating vents. Painter crossed the hall and keyed his way into the opposite suite.

Cassandra Sanchez sat nestled among her electronic surveillance equipment and monitors like a spider in a web. She was dressed in black, from boots to blouse. Even her leather shoulder holster and belt matched her outfit, carrying her 45 Sig automatic. She had customized the pistol with a Hogue rubberized grip and mounted the thumb catch for her magazine release on the right side to accommodate her left hand. She was a deadly-accurate marksman, trained like Painter in Special Forces before being recruited into Sigma.

Her eyes greeted him with the sparkle of the endgame.

His own breath quickened at the sight of her. Her breasts pushed against the thin material of her silk blouse, snugged tight by the shoulder holster. He had to force his eyes up to maintain proper contact. They had been partners for the past five years and only recently had his feelings for her deepened. Business lunches turned into drinks after work, and finally long dinners. But still, certain lines had yet to be crossed, a distance tentatively maintained.

She seemed to sense his thoughts and glanced away, never pressing. “About time the bastard got up here,” she said, turning her attention back to her monitors. “He’d better burn those files in the next quarter hour or- Shit! ”

“What?” Painter stepped to her side.

She pointed to one of the monitors. It showed a three-dimensional cross section of the upper levels of the Grand Pequot Tower. A small red X glowed within the structure. “He’s heading back down!”