thirty yards, Lang was certain he could see the Templar grinning at the sure kill.
The man with the Heckler and Koch aimed at Lang stood clear of the rock to get the perfect angle. It was a fatal mistake.
The guy's head dissolved in a pink mist.
Lang jumped into space just as the rifle's second crack of the day bounced from hillside to hillside like a trick shot on a billiard table.
The sound made the man below lookup. He moved but not quickly enough to avoid the force of Lang's weight. The impact knocked the breath out of both men and they went down in a heap. The Templar was struggling to bring his gun to bear. Lang slipped an arm under one of his opponent's and snaked a hand over the man's shoulder to cup the back of the head, giving Lang leverage to force him sideways so the weapon pointed harmlessly at the ground.
With his other hand, Lang had the rock up, ready to pound the Templar's skull.
'That's quite enough, Mr. Reilly.'
The words connected with Lang's consciousness simultaneously with cold steel against the back of his neck. He recognized the feel of a gun's muzzle as well as Silver Hair's voice. That had been it, then: one Templar to keep the shooter occupied while the other made himself bait with Silver Hair right behind, both men screened by the boulder between them and the rifleman.
Lang had been had.
'Drop the stone and clasp your hands behind your head. Slowly, now, stand.' Lang did as he was told. The man Lang had jumped on got to his feet slowly. His sleeves and trousers were shredded and one of his jacket's inseams was torn open. He'd never wear that suit again. That was the only good news, that plus the fact that two of the murderous bunch would never kill again.
Silver Hair kept the weapon, whatever it was, pressed to the back of Lang's skull as he spoke a few words in a language Lang didn't understand. The other man turned his back to Lang.
'Put your hands on his shoulders, Mr. Reilly,' Silver Hair ordered.
Lang did as ordered and the trio began a slow walk down the mountainside. With Lang sandwiched between the two Templars, whoever had killed the other two couldn't shoot without a better than even chance the bullet would penetrate two bodies, Lang's included. Clever.
8
Cardou
1047 hours
'Shit!' The man stood, staring through his binoculars. 'They're getting away.' For the first time in hours, the sniper looked up from the scope. 'Not all of them.'
The man grunted disapproval. 'Whatever. They're taking Reilly. We should follow and see if you can't bag the other two.'
'And risk killing him? Unless they are sick, crazy, they will keep him between them like ham in a sandwich.' 'I'm sure he'd be amused at the simile,' the man muttered, 'but they're getting away.' 'Not true. They will not stay around here and when they leave, we will know where.'
9
Cardou
1103 hours
They were on the other side of Cardou when Lang and the two Templars came to a Range Rover parked between two outcroppings so large that the vehicle was invisible until they were almost on top· of it.
'In the back,' Silver Hair said.
Lang was climbing in when he felt a pinprick in the back of his neck. Before he could get into the seat, the interior of the car began to ripple as though he were seeing it through water. His arms and legs were heavy, too heavy to move. Lang knew what had happened, that he should fight the effect of the drug.
But it felt too good to complain.
Then everything went black.
Part Five
CHAPTER ONE
1
Location unknown
Time unknown
When he regained consciousness, Lang had no idea how long he had been out or where he was.
Of course, they wouldn't have wanted him to know, not if they were planning extensive questioning. They were succeeding. All he knew was that he was lying in an unusually uncomfortable bed, staring up at what appeared to be an old-fashioned canopy. And that his shoulder still hurt like hell where his arm had been wrenched upwards on the hillside.
Lang's Agency training taught total disorientation as an effective interrogation tool. Keeping a captive ignorant of day or night, the date or the hour upsets the internal clock just like jet lag. Jet lag, though, goes away once the body accepts the new schedule. To question someone effectively, you make sure nothing is done at the same time twice. Likewise, not letting the subject know where he is may open up all sort of anxieties the questioner can put to use.
Also the lights. You keep the subject in a place without windows and at the same light level twenty-four hours a day. Intensely bright light if sleep deprivation is part of the plan; low light, too dim to see well, if not.
The talk about truth serum had been just that, talk. Outside of some old spy novels, drugs are usually little help. Sodium pentothal, scopolamine, narcotics like that, inhibit the brain's ability to fabricate, to make up lies, but they also are risky. Too little and you still get lies; too much and the subject is either sound asleep or dead. Whatever the drug makes them babble is going to be incomprehensible.
Plain old-fashioned torture was less than reliable, too. It worked for confessions for the same reason it doesn't work to get information: a man will tell any lie just to stop the pain. Lang very much hoped the Templars realized that.
Lang had been taught that modern interrogation consists of simply wearing your subject down, breaking his will. A less polite word for it is a species of brainwashing.
Lang slid out of bed to the floor, some three or four feet down, and walked the perimeter of the small room. The bowed exterior wall made him curious as to the outside appearance of the building. The single window was shuttered and, no doubt, barred on the outside. The only door was fitted with a intricately cast brass lock plate. When he bent over, closed an eye and squinted through the keyhole, he saw nothing. The key had been left in the
