Taking a deep breath, Ames rose, steeled himself, then took a shot, the round suppressed and thumping quietly into the shooter's right arm. The guy jerked to one side, clutched his wound, but kept on.

Still . . . he was wounded prey. Time to close in.

Baring his teeth, Ames propelled himself forward as though ready to leap the hurdles. He closed in on the shooter and finally saw his opportunity.

With a groan of exertion, he launched himself into the air and landed on the trunk of a black Corvette, the fiberglass crackling and crunching beneath his feet as he ran up to the roof.

The shooter turned, saw Ames.

Ames, about to lose his balance, fired anyway. Though he missed, the round drove the shooter onto the grassy median between lots.

That was when Ames leapt off the car and tackled him. The thick scent of mud and wet grass wafted into his face as they rolled over and Ames drove his elbow into the man's nose, immediately breaking it. Then he found the correct pressure point on the man's wrist, forcing him to release the pistol, which he tossed aside.

Now bleeding from his gunshot wound and broken nose, the shooter was too disoriented to struggle. Ames quickly cuffed him and rolled him onto his back.

The guy was no older than Ames, his eyes burning with hatred--the only fight he had left in him. It was at moments like this--post-adrenaline-rush moments--that the compulsion clutched Ames and he could not stop it. Not yet.

Trembling, he reached into his pocket and produced a Zippo lighter of the kind he'd been carrying since he was sixteen. Unconsciously, he rolled the lighter through his fingers and opened it before the shooter's eyes with remarkable precision and dexterity, the flame appearing as though from a magician's hand. Pale yellow light flickered over the shooter's face, and the hatred in the man's eyes began to melt into something else as Ames brought the lighter even closer.

For just a few seconds, they remained there, locked firmly in the grasp of that hypnotizing flame, and all Ames wanted to do was see the man burn.

But he was stronger than that. No government or police shrink had ever been able to crack him. He snapped shut the lighter, took a deep breath, then grabbed the shooter by the shirt collar and hauled him to his feet--just as a pickup truck with darkly tinted windows rolled by.

Ames glanced in the truck's direction. The driver's-side window lowered, and another Asian man holding a pistol with a long suppressor appeared.

With a gasp, Ames shoved the shooter between himself and the truck, even as the driver fired two rounds that punched hard into the shooter's back. Ames released the man and picked up his own pistol in time to fire into the truck's tailgate, but the vehicle was already screeching away before Ames could read the tag. Now their only witness lay dead at Ames's feet.

"Hansen, it's Ames," he began over the channel. "I got the shooter. He was alive but now--"

"What happened?"

"Uh, no time now."

"Rally back at the hotel."

"What about the body?"

Hansen cursed. "We're coming down."

TWENTYminutes later they all gathered in Hansen's hotel room, and as team leader, he insisted on debriefing them before they spoke to Grim.

Gillespie had been the last one to show up and now cursed and said, "This can't be our fault, can it? It's all bad intel. They were on to him before we even moved in. That's all it is. Bad intel."

"Maybe, maybe not," said Hansen.

"Maybe the Chinese didn't off him. Maybe someone else did," said Ames. "Maybe they want us to believe the Chinese did it."

"This is all ridiculous," cried Valentina. "My part of the recon was flawless. I can't speak for any of you . . ."

"Why don't you just say it, honey?" snapped Ames. "Tell us how much you love us."

She glowered at him.

"Whoa! Please don't burn me." Ames threw up his hands in mock surrender.

Hansen balled his own hand into a fist. "Listen up. This is why Grim won't cut us loose yet. We need to earn her trust, and we start by trusting each other--not placing blame."

"Don't call me a Splinter Cell if I'm not working alone," said Valentina. "I don't need any of you."

"The feeling's mutual," said Gillespie.

Noboru picked up the TV's remote and turned on the news. There it was: a three-ring circus of police and TV news crews outside the office complex. The report shifted to Leonard's estate, still smoldering behind a young field reporter who gaped at the blackened skeleton. "I think the bombs in the house were meant for his wife."

"Genius over here," said Ames. "Make this guy a general. How do you say 'general' in Japanese?"

"Shut up," spat Noboru.

"Look, as far as we know everything went according to plan," said Hansen. "The shooter and the bombs were already in place. No one saw anything else, right? No sloppy work on our part, right? No footprints."

Noboru shrugged. Ames did likewise. Gillespie and Valentina just sighed in disgust.

Then Valentina spun around and said, "What're you worried about, Ben? When you say Grim won't cut us loose, you mean us, not yourself. You're the only one who's worked as a real Splinter Cell, on his own, without any . . . baggage." Valentina looked daggers at the others.

Ames puckered up for a kiss.

"Yeah, I went out once. More than a year ago."

"And you came back from Russia a hero, so they put you in charge of the rest of us of noobs," said Gillespie. "So what now? Have we just screwed ourselves out of the NSA?"

"I don't think so," said Ames. "I wouldn't ask for a raise right now, but the government's always looking for suicidal maniacs who can fit into tight corners."

"Speak for yourself," said Valentina.

"I will, because you look like you're putting on a few pounds there, Maya."

"Ames, enough," snapped Hansen. "Get back to your hotels. Pack up. We're out of here. I'll call Grim, and we'll work out what to do with this body."

ONthe flight back home, Hansen dozed off, and in the shadows between consciousness and dreaming he strained to see a face. . . .

Then he heard Gillespie's voice echo: "You came back from Russia a hero."

A hero.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Hansen took himself back to that fateful day when he'd marveled over the NSA office complex and gone in to receive his very first mission. . . .

3

NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY THIRD ECHELON HEADQUARTERS FORT MEADE, MARYLAND EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO

WALLSof obsidian-colored glass rose from the Maryland countryside and reflected swaths of deep blue and green across their mottled surfaces. A series of barbed wire and electrical fences cordoned off the grounds, and gatehouses were placed at designated intervals to allow entrance into parking lots that could accommodate more than eighteen thousand cars. The length and breadth of the NSA complex repeatedly amazed Hansen, and he sometimes felt like pinching himself as a reminder that, yes, even though he was still so young-- painfullyyoung, as Grim had once put it--this was his life now.