Ten seconds later, the second unmanned flier followed its counterpart

  into the air. Both drones, now almost invisible from the ground and too small to register on most radars, climbed steadily toward their cruising altitude of three thousand feet and flew toward Paris at roughly one hundred miles per hour.

  Rural Virginia

  Staying low, Jon Smith followed Peter Howell west across a wide field choked with tall weeds and thickets of jagged brambles. Their surroundings glowed faintly green through their night-vision goggles. A couple of hundred yards off to their left, the paved county road cut a straight line across the darkened landscape. Ahead, the ground sloped up, rising gently above a stagnant scum-covered pond on their right. The gravel access road Kit Pierson had turned onto snaked back and forth as it climbed the low hill in front of them.

  Something sharp snagged Smith’s shoulder, stabbing right through the thick cloth deep enough to draw blood. He gritted his teeth and went on. Peter was doing his best to lead them through the worst of the tangled vegetation, but there were places where they just had to bull through, ignoring the thorns and briars tearing at their dark clothing and black leather gloves.

  Halfway up the hill, the Englishman dropped to one knee. He scanned the terrain around them carefully and then waved Smith forward to join him. The lights were still on at the farmhouse up on the crest.

  Both men were dressed and equipped for a night reconnaissance mission across rough ground. Besides their AN/PVS 7 goggles, each wore a combat vest stuffed with the surveillance gear—cameras and various types of listening devices—left waiting for them at Andrews Air Force Base. Smith had a holster for his SIG-Sauer pistol strapped to his thigh, while Peter had the same kind of rig for the Browning Hi-Power he favored. For extra firepower in a real emergency, each also carried a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun slung across his back.

  Peter shook off one of his gloves and then held up a wetted finger to test the direction of the soft, cool night breeze whispering around them. He nodded, pleased by the result. “Now there’s a bit of good fortune. The wind is from the west.”

  Smith waited. The other man had spent decades in the field, first for the SAS and then for MI6. Peter Howell had forgotten more about moving through potentially hostile territory than Smith had ever learned.

  “This wind won’t carry our scent ahead of us,” Peter explained. “If there are any dogs up there, they won’t smell us coming.”

  Peter slid his glove back on and led the way again. Both men crouched even lower as they came out onto the top of the shallow rise. They were within yards of an old, ruined barn—a hollowed-out, roofless wreck that was more a pile of broken, rotting boards than a standing structure. Beyond that, they could make out the shapes of two parked cars, the Volkswagen Passat belonging to Kit Pierson, and another, this one an older American make. And there was enough light leaking out through the mostly closed drapes of their target, a small one-story farmhouse, to make it glow brightly in their night-vision gear.

  Smith saw that whoever owned the place had gone to the trouble of whacking away the tallest weeds and brambles in a rough circle around the building. He followed Peter down onto his belly and wriggled through the low grass after him, crossing the open space as quickly as possible to gain the cover provided by the parked cars.

  “Where to now?” he murmured.

  Peter nodded toward a big picture window on this side of the house, not far from the front door. “Over there, I should think,” he said softly. “I thought I saw a shadow moving behind those drapes a moment ago. Worth a look anyhow.” He glanced at Smith. “Cover me, will you, Jon?”

  Smith tugged his SIG-Sauer out of the holster. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  The other man nodded once. Then he crawled rapidly across the patch of oil-stained concrete and disappeared into a patch of tall brush

  growing right up against the side of the farmhouse. Only the night-vision goggles he was wearing let Smith keep track of him. To anyone watching with unaided eyes, Peter would have seemed nothing more than a moving shadow, a shadow that simply vanished into blackness.

  The Englishman raised himself up onto his knees, carefully examining the window above him. Satisfied, he dropped flat and signaled Jon to come ahead.

  Smith crawled over to join him as fast as he could, feeling terribly exposed along every inch of the way. He wriggled the last few feet into the weeds and lay still, breathing heavily.

  Peter leaned close to his ear and motioned to the window. “Pierson is definitely inside.”

  Smith smiled tightly. “Glad to hear it. I’d sure hate to have just wrecked my knees for nothing.” He rolled onto his side and tugged a handheld laser surveillance kit out of one of the Velcro-sealed pouches on his combat vest. He slipped on the attached headset, flipped a switch to activate the low-powered IR laser, and carefully aimed the device at the window above them.

  If he could hold it steady enough, the laser beam would bounce back off the glass and pick up the vibrations induced in it by anyone talking inside the room. Then, assuming everything worked right, the electronics package should be able to translate those vibrations back into understandable sounds through his headphones.

  Almost to his surprise, the system worked.

  “Damn it, Kit,” he heard a man’s voice growl angrily. “You can’t back out of this operation now. We’re going ahead, whether you like it or not. There are no other options. Either we destroy the Lazarus Movement—or it destroys us!”

  Covert One 5 - The Lazarus Vendetta

  Chapter Thirty

  Lazarus’ Private Office

  The man called Lazarus sat calmly behind a solid, age-darkened teak desk in his private office. The room was quiet, cool, and dimly lit. A ventilation system hummed softly in the background, bringing in air rigorously scrubbed clean of any trace of the outside world.

  Much of the desk was taken up with a large computer-driven display. With the gentle flick of a finger on his keyboard, Lazarus switched rapidly between views relayed from cameras around the globe. One, apparently mounted aboard an aircraft, showed the winding trace of a river unrolling two or three thousand feet below. Villages, roads, bridges, and tracts of forest came into view and then slid off-camera. Another camera showed a dingy street crowded with stripped and vandalized automobiles. The street was lined with drab concrete-block buildings. Their windows and doors were heavily barricaded with steel bars.

  Below the images on his display, three digital readouts showed the local time, the time in Paris, and the time along the eastern seaboard of the United States. A secure satellite phone system sat next to the computer. Two blinking green lights indicated pending connections to two of his special action teams.

  Lazarus smiled, reveling in the exquisite sensation of watching a complex, intricately crafted plan unfolding with absolutely perfect timing. With one command, he had set in motion the last of his needed field experiments—the tests so necessary to refine his chosen instruments of the planet’s salvation. With another, he would begin the series of actions intended to throw the CIA, the FBI, and the British Secret Intelligence Service into self-destructive chaos.

  Soon, he thought coldly, very soon. As the sun rose higher today, a horrified world would start to see its worst fears about the United States confirmed. Alliances would shatter. Old wounds would reopen. Long-held rivalries would burst again into open conflict. And by the time the full magnitude of what was really happening became clear, it would be impossible for anyone to stop him.

  His internal phone chimed once. Lazarus tapped the speaker button. “Yes?”

  “Our drones are within fifty kilometers of the target,” reported the voice of his senior technician. “Both are operating within the expected norms.”

  “Very good. Continue as planned,” Lazarus ordered. He tapped the button, cutting the circuit. Another gentle flick of his finger completed the satellite connection to one of his action teams.

  “The Paris operation is under way,” he told the man waiting patiently on the other end. “Be ready to carry out your instructions on my next signal.”

  Rural Virginia

  Three big 4x4 trucks were parked just inside a patch of scrub pines growing along the crest of a ridge several hundred yards west of Burke’s ram—

  shackle farm. Twelve men wearing black jackets and sweaters and dark-colored jeans waited in the shelter of this clump of stunted trees. Four of them were posted as sentries at different points around the outside edge, keeping watch through British-made Simrad night-vision binoculars. Seven squatted patiently on the sandy soil farther inside the grove. They were busy making last-minute weapons checks on their assortment of assault rifles, submachine guns, and pistols.

  The twelfth, the tall green-eyed man named Terce, sat in the cab of one of the 4x4s. “Understood,” he said into his secure cell phone. “We are standing by.” He hung up and went back to monitoring a heated conversation relayed through his radio set. An angry voice sounded in his headset. “Either we destroy the Lazarus Movement—or it destroys us!”

  “Melodrama doesn’t suit you, Hal,” a woman’s voice answered icily. “I’m not suggesting that we surrender to the Movement. But TOCSIN itself is no longer worth the price we’re paying—or the risks we’re running. And I meant what I said over the phone earlier: If this lousy operation blows up in my face, I don’t plan to be the only one taking a fall.”

  Listening to the transmission from a bug he had planted earlier that night, the second member of the Horatii nodded to himself. The CIA officer was quite right. FBI Deputy Assistant Director Katherine Pierson was no longer reliable. Not that it mattered very much anymore, he thought with a trace of grim amusement.

  Automatically Terce checked the magazine on his Walther, screwed on the silencer, and then slid the pistol back into his coat pocket. He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. There were only minutes at most remaining before he would need to act.

  A soft, insistent beep signaled a priority call from one of his sentries. He switched channels. “Go ahead.”

  “This is McRae. There’s something moving up near the house,” the lookout warned in a soft lowland Scots burr.

  “I’m on my way,” Terce said. The big man slid out of the 4x4, ducking his head to clear the frame, and hurried to the edge of the pine woods. He

  found McRae crouched behind a fallen tree trunk overgrown with vines and moved low into position beside him.

  “Take a look for yourself. In those bushes and tall grass close to the front door,” the short, wiry Scot said, pointing. “I can’t make out anything now, mind you, but I saw movement there just a minute ago.”

  The green-eyed man raised his own binoculars, slowly scanning the south side of Burke’s house. Two man-shaped blotches leaped immediately into focus, bright white thermal blooms against the cooler gray of the dense vegetation in which they lay hidden.

  “You have very good eyes, McRae,” Terce said calmly. The night-vision gear used by his sentries worked by amplifying all available ambient light. They turned night into eerie, green-tinted day, but they could not see “heat” in the way his special equipment could. Weighing over five pounds and with a price tag of nearly sixty thousand dollars, his French-made “Sophie” thermal-imaging binoculars were top-of-the-line in every way and far more effective. At night, under these overcast skies, the best passive light intensifier systems had a maximum range of three or four hundred yards, and often much less. In contrast, using thermal imaging he could detect the heat signature made by a human being up to two miles away—even through thick cover.

  Terce wondered whether it was mere coincidence that these two spies appeared so soon after Kit Pierson arrived. Or had she brought them with her—either knowingly or unknowingly? The big man shrugged away the thought. He did not believe in coincidences. Nor, for that matter, did his ultimate employer.

  Terce considered his options. For a moment he regretted the Center’s decision to transfer his specialist sniper to the Paris-based security force. It would have been simpler and far less dangerous to eliminate these two enemies with a pair of well-aimed long-range rifle shots. Then he quickly realized wishing would not alter the circumstances. His team was trained and equipped for close-quarters action —so those were the tactics he would have to employ.

  Terce handed the binoculars to McRae. “Keep an eye on those two,” he ordered coolly. “Let me know if they make any sudden moves.” Then he pulled out his cell phone and hit a preset number.

  The phone on the other end rang once. “Burke here.”

  “This is Terce,” he said quietly. “Do not react openly in any way to what I am about to say. Do you understand me?”

  There was a short pause. “Yes, I understand you,” Burke said at last.

  “Good. Now then, listen carefully. My security team has detected hostile activity near your house. You are under close observation. Very close observation. Within meters, in fact.”

  “That’s very … interesting,” the CIA officer said tightly. He hesitated briefly. “Can your people handle this situation on their own?”

  “Most definitely,” Terce assured him.

  “And do you have a time frame for that?” Burke asked.

  The big man’s bright green eyes gleamed in the darkness. “Minutes, Mr. Burke. Only minutes.”

  “I see.” Again Burke hesitated. Finally, he asked, “Should I consider this an interagency matter?”

  Terce knew that the other man was asking if Kit Pierson was somehow responsible for the snoopers now almost literally on his doorstep. He smiled. At this point, whether that was true or not was immaterial. “I think it would be wise to do so.”

  “That’s too bad,” the CIA officer said edgily. “Really too bad.”

  ‘Yes, it is,” the big man agreed. “For now, hold tight where you are. Out.”

  Terce flipped the phone shut. Then he retrieved his thermal-imaging binoculars from McRae. “Go back to the vehicles and bring the others here,” he said. “But I want them to come quietly.” He grinned wolfishly. “Tell them they’re going hunting.”

  #

  “Who was that, Hal?” Kit Pierson asked, clearly puzzled.

  “The duty officer at Langley,” Burke told her, speaking slowly and dis—

  tinctly. His voice sounded strained and unnatural. “The NSA just sent over a courier with a few Movement-related intercepts. …”

  Jon Smith listened closely. He frowned. Still holding the laser microphone aimed at the window above him, he glanced at Peter Howell. “Something’s wrong,” he whispered. “Burke just got a phone call and now he’s gone all stiff. He’s just bullshitting, not really saying anything.”

  “Do you think he’s tumbled to us?” Peter asked quietly.

  “Maybe. But I don’t see how.”

  “We may have underestimated this fellow,” Peter said. The corners of his mouth turned down. “A cardinal sin in this line of work, I’m afraid. I suspect Mr. Burke of the CIA has more resources available to him here than we had hoped.”

  “Meaning he has backup?”

  “Quite possibly.” The Englishman dug the USGS survey map out of one of the pockets on his vest and studied it, tracing the contour lines and terrain features with one gloved finger. He tapped the outline of a wooded ridge not far off to the west. “If I wanted to keep a good, close eye on this house, that’s where I would put my observation post.”

  Smith felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Peter was right. That ridge offered a clear view of most of the ground around the farmhouse, including their current position. “What do you suggest?”

  “An immediate retreat,” the pale-eyed man said crisply, stuffing the survey map back into his vest pocket. He pulled the Heckler &Koch MP5 submachine gun over his head and yanked back on the cocking handle, chambering a 9mm round. “We don’t know how strong the opposition is, and I don’t see any point in loitering about to learn the hard way. We’ve acquired some useful information, Jon. Let’s not push our luck further tonight.”

  Smith nodded, already putting the laser microphone and its associated gear away. “Good point.” He readied his own submachine gun.

  “Then follow me.” Peter rolled to his feet and then, bent almost double, scurried back to the cover offered by the two cars parked close to the

  house. Smith followed him, moving as fast as he could while also staying low to the ground. At any second he expected to hear a startled shout or feel the sudden impact of a bullet. But he heard and felt only the silence of the night and the pounding of his own accelerating pulse.

  From there, they moved past the ruined barn and on down the slope into the bramble-choked field below, trying to keep the bulk of the little hill between them and the higher ridge to the west. Peter led the way, ghosting quietly through the snarled clumps of thorns and waist-high weeds with a grace born out of years of training and experience.

  They were close to the edge of the stagnant pond when the Englishman suddenly went prone, hugging the dirt behind a patch of raspberry bushes. Smith dropped flat behind him and then crawled forward, using his elbows and knees while cradling the MP5 against his chest. He tried hard not to breathe in too deeply. They were below the level of the cool breeze whispering across the field, and the air was thick with the pent-up stench of algae and rotting fruit.

  “Christ,” Peter muttered. “That’s torn it! Listen.”

  Smith heard the faint noise of a powerful engine, growing steadily louder. Cautiously he raised his head to peer over the top of the closest bush. About two hundred yards away a large black 4x4 cruised slowly past on the county road, traveling east. It was driving without lights.

  “You think they’ll spot our cars?” he asked softly.

  Peter nodded grimly. The small stand of trees in which they had parked would not hide their vehicles from a determined search. “They’re sure to,” he said. “And when they do, all hell will break loose—if it hasn’t already.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “And it has, alas,” he murmured. “Take a look behind us, Jon. But do it slowly.”