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Hassan had been mentally preparing for this assignment for several days, in the way that he normally did: Focusing. Visualizing. Avoiding all distractions. Every thought furthering the ultimate objective.

But he had really been preparing longer than that. Ever since the moment he had received the message that Ahmed had been killed in the south of France.

The Administrator was paying Mehmet Hassan more for this assignment than he had for any of the others. But it wasn’t the money that motivated him. This time, it was personal. The Administrator insisted this be a two-man operation, and that Mehmet use computer surveillance. Not necessary, but it would make the job easier. The Administrator wanted to make certain this mission succeeded. Quickly. And it would.

Mehmet Hassan logged on to his laptop computer and accessed the F-2 network to check for new transmissions.
Yes
. The subject had driven across the Chesapeake Bay in a rented Jeep Wrangler, then taken it to a house in the woods not more than three miles from where Mehmet Hassan was sitting. The subject had arrived.

“The Butcher” already had a plan for afterward, although he wouldn’t think about it again until the operation was complete. Three deliveries: A part of the leg with the tattoo would be sent by Federal Express in a florist box to Angelina Moore, the attorney general, at her residence in Falls Church, Virginia. The head, minus the eyes, would be gift-wrapped and sent to his brother in Washington. The genitals and the eyes would be left on silk napkins in the desk drawer of a woman in Switzerland named Anna Vostrak.

CHARLES MALLORY CLICKED OPEN
the lock of his rented Jeep Wrangler, got in, and turned the ignition. The gravel drive wound through thick birch and pine woods for nearly half a mile, then came to a two-lane blacktop road that took him to the highway.

He drove another seven and three-quarter miles to the Bay Woods shopping plaza. Parked in the lot. It was a typical suburban strip shopping center, with a CVS, liquor store, sundries shop, dry cleaners, and Subway, anchored by a Food Lion grocery store. He walked slowly across the lot to the ATM by the grocery.

MEHMET HASSAN WATCHED
his laptop monitor in Room 7 of the Sea Breeze Motel: New images of Charles Mallory, provided through the Administrator’s network. Mallory walking up a path in the woods, the morning light dappled through the bare trees. Then another: parking the Jeep, getting out, walking toward a Food Lion grocery store. And then a digital video of him, standing in front of an ATM, inserting his card, waiting, pressing in the digits of his PIN. Hassan stopped it and clicked the image enlarger, saw the close-cropped hair, the angular face. Then he clicked the location scanner, calling up the coordinates. It was here, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Less than two miles from the motel. The time: fourteen minutes ago.

Hassan waited for the follow-ups. Every minute, a new transmission. The satellite cameras followed the Jeep as Mallory traveled east along the highway, and then turned right onto a two-lane road. Through forestland back to the cottage, where it stopped. A man emerged. A face and a gait that he knew now. That he had memorized. He returned to the location scanner and called up a map, requesting the most direct route to Charles Mallory’s current location.

CHIDI OKORO HAD
rigged the property three weeks earlier with dozens of infrared motion sensors cued to a computerized monitoring module set up against a wall in the living room. When one of the quarter-sized sensors was activated—detecting the radiation of human body heat in the air—a high-pitched alarm would chirp inside the cabin, and Charles Mallory would be able to see on his computer monitor just where the breach had occurred. When he needed to sleep, he would attach a decelerator unit to his arm, with low-wattage electrodes held in place by Velcro strips. The electrodes would give him a mild electric jolt, waking him if one of the sensors was tripped.

Charlie had decided that he was going to stay in the cabin until
Il Macellaio
came to him. The same strategy he had used with the Butcher’s cousin in France. For the next few hours, or days, or whatever was required, he would keep his mind focused on two things: staying alert and anticipating his prey. This was his final game.

On the floor beneath the bed was a rifle case, placed there three weeks earlier—a Heckler & Koch PSG1 with a custom-made 50x telescopic site thermal infrared scope.

There was only one path to the cottage, and only one door. Five windows. They would try to come at him through the woods, although first they would probably access the property from the gravel road. However they came onsite, they would have to trip one of the infrared sensors, which were placed all along the perimeter.

He had stocked the refrigerator and brought along warm clothes. Unlike most people, Charles Mallory could remain focused on a single object for hours at a time when he needed to. It wasn’t something that just came to him. He had trained for this.

Charlie waited through the remainder of the first day, sitting on an armchair across from the opened window, watching the woods for any changes in scenery, imagining what they were doing, the strategies they had considered and rejected. Listening for the distant sound of an engine or of gravel under wheels. Becoming attuned to the natural sounds of the outdoors—wind stirring the leaves, the footsteps of squirrels on tree bark, bird wings flapping—so he would know when a sound wasn’t natural.

Several times, he thought of Anna, and what they would do when “this business” was over. The clarity of her dark, reassuring eyes. He
thought of the places they would go. It was his way of detaching from the work, taking a break.

He slept for no longer than an hour at a time the first night, wrapping himself in blankets against the cold. But nothing came through the woods overnight. He woke to the cool glare of the sun rising in the trees across the dewy forest floor and listened—heard the creaking of branches in the wind, the fluttering sound of falling leaves. Nothing else.

He ate a breakfast of fruit, granola bars, and coffee, staying close to the monitor. Sitting in the chair and watching the woods. Thinking about Anna. Waiting.

It was 5:23 that afternoon when the first alarm sounded. Mallory checked the monitor. Something or someone had entered the property from the east side of the gravel road about three-quarters of a mile away. It was picked up again forty-five seconds later, moving closer. And then once more. A trajectory suggesting to him that it was someone walking toward a specific target.

Then came a second breach, about a hundred yards to the northwest. A second subject. They were on the property now. Two of them.

Charlie Mallory lifted the weapon out of the gun case. The scope was special-operations military grade, capable of changing from a day scope to a night scope when necessary. But he wasn’t going to need the thermal night scope, not yet. He slid the mounting rail into the top of the rifle and switched it on. Put his right eye in the eyecup. Placed the gun’s mounted bipod on the table top across from the open window and settled in the wooden folding chair beside it. The scope was 50x magnification, higher than any telescopic lens that was commercially available.

HAVING TWO TARGETS
made it more difficult. Probably, they would stake out the cottage from a distance first, using their gun sights. Charlie had already determined the approximate spots in the woods that would give them the best views of the windows and door.

He slowly scoured the woods through his gun scope, aiming in the directions where the scanners had been tripped, following the likely trajectories. Twice, he saw motion. The first was a deer, walking over a rise. Charles Mallory saw it stop and turn, hyper-alert, and then dart away.

The second movement he spotted was not a deer.

He followed the subject through the scope of his rifle, dialing in a clearer focus: an agile, medium-sized man, wearing a camouflage jacket and pants. Moving stealthily among the trees, carrying what looked to be a Russian 12.7mm rifle. A man nearly as alert and focused as he was. Climbing in a crouch over a small rise in the forest floor, then ducking down behind a fallen tree.

Charlie twisted the scope, adjusting the magnification until the predator’s features were sharp, in the center of the illuminated floating reticles. So sharp that he could see the pores in his dark skin, a hook-shaped scar on one cheek. But it wasn’t
Il Macellaio
. No, this must be the partner. Someone he didn’t know.

He turned his scope away, quickly scanning the woods behind him and then in front with his eyes. Left to right. Realizing that this man might just be a decoy.
Where was Hassan?

But he saw nothing.

Or maybe this was only an orientation. Getting a feel for the set-up.

Again, the high-pitched tweet of the alarm sounded. The other man was somewhere behind the cottage now—a vantage point Charlie couldn’t see—and coming closer. Charles Mallory felt a kick of adrenaline. He walked to the back bedroom and planted the rifle’s bipod on a table, several feet from the window. The woods were thicker in back, and he scanned them in the direction of the tripped sensor. Right to left. Up and down. Saw the details of the tree bark, the veins in fallen leaves. But nothing human.
Il Macellaio
was too far away to see yet, or else hidden among the trees.

He moved in a crouch back to the front room. The other man was coming closer, close enough to see Charles Mallory, probably, and to take him out if Mallory made a mistake. He shuffled to the corner of the right front window. Found him again in his scope. Watched as he crawled through the brush to a spot on a rise and then lay flat in the leaves, barely visible. Something, he saw, was strapped to his back. A second rifle? Charlie ducked away from the window as the predator lifted his scope, aiming at the window.

Charles Mallory crawled to the back room. Looked through the rifle scope at the thick rolling forestland behind the house. Listening to the breeze. At first, he didn’t see anything, scanning
the woods meticulously. Then, finally, he found him: a blur among the trees.

Il Macellaio
would come in later, Charlie sensed, after the first blow had been delivered. The other man was his front line. Unless they were planning to try to overpower him, coming at the house from two directions. But that wouldn’t be smart, because he had a surveillance advantage. He could see them coming better than they could see him. Mallory returned to the front room. Found the other man through his scope, lying on a leafy patch of earth among the beeches and pines. He watched the man raise his weapon again, aim it toward the cabin. Mallory ducked away from the window, but not before recognizing what was strapped to the man’s back. It
was
a second gun. The one in his hands was a Russian-made sniper rifle. The other was something else entirely: a twelve-gauge, pump-action shotgun. What looked like a Mossberg 500.
Why would he use a pump-action shotgun for a sniper mission?
Then he realized: It wasn’t for a sniper mission. The other weapon was a riot gun. He was preparing to shoot rounds of tear gas into the house through the windows. That was their tactic. Mallory would be forced out the front door, and as soon as he was visible, the predator would cut him down, probably with a body shot.

It was actually a pretty good plan, although Charles Mallory had prepared for it. He had a tear gas mask beside the surveillance monitor. But he wasn’t planning on using it.
His
plan was that it wouldn’t be necessary.

Charlie watched as the man moved closer—shuffling quickly for a few yards then flattening himself once again, in a pocket of fallen branches and shrubs and under-growth. Mallory scrambled to the other front window. Saw him lift the sniper rifle again, aim it toward the cabin. Lower it. He watched whenever the man moved, and he ducked from sight when he raised his gun.

Again, the alarms chirped. Two of them. Both men were closing in. He thought about Nadra Nkosi and Jason Wells, both of whom had wanted to be here.
Stay calm
, he told himself.
Stay focused
.

The first predator was less than three hundred meters away now. Probably close enough. The Heckler & Koch PSG1 had an accuracy range of more than six hundred meters, but Charlie wanted to be certain that he could get him with a single shot. And even then, he didn’t want to do it without knowing where the other man was.

Another sudden movement. The man in camouflage jammed himself forward through the brush and went down. Mallory tried to find him through the scope. Saw nothing. He looked at the monitor screen. Nothing.
Where was Hassan?

Charlie listened to the quiet, identifying each of the sounds: light wind high in the branches; a bird calling from a tree; another lifting off into the air; a distant scurrying sound.

When he spotted the other predator again, he felt a surge of relief. He watched the man pull himself on his elbows into a closer cover, behind a tree stump and a thicket of branches.

The man mounted his gun on the branch of a fallen tree, this time sighting the window, it seemed. Charlie’s window.

Charlie stood in front of the window for an instant to let the man see him, then ducked away, falling to the floor and crawling across to the other window. He removed the bipod from the gun and pointed the weapon from a corner of the window. Adjusted his sight and dialed an elevation into the scope to correct for the arc of the bullet at three hundred meters. He found the man again in his cross-hairs. Saw the pores in his skin. The receding hairline. The hook on his cheek. The eyes—steady, obsessively steady, but focusing on the wrong window.

The predator pulled his head away from the sight for a moment, to give himself perspective. That’s when Charlie squeezed the trigger. The 7.62mm bullet cracked through the silence, striking the man in the left eye, snapping his head back. The sound of the shot echoed through the woods, along with frantic motion. Deer, probably.

Charles Mallory crawled to the back room and studied the woods where Hassan had been, moving his scope from side to side. Nothing. He listened. Heard twigs cracking, faraway footsteps. Someone running, perhaps, in the other direction. He planted the bipod on the table and adjusted his scope for a longer range. Saw a blur in the woods, moving away from him. He dialed an elevation for five hundred meters. Found the moving target skittering down a hill. But he was unable to get a clear view. He fired, missed. Fired again. The figure seemed to drop. Silence. Then he scrambled up, running. Mallory saw him through the scope, fired again.