Infiltrator

more than once and seen it on colleagues' when they were faced with a job they loathed. But a job they would do with a determination even greater than their hatred for it.

BETWEEN ASUNCION AND VILLA HAYES, PARAGUAY: THE

PRESENT

Marco kept glancing at the Terminator until it asked him, 'Why are you staring at me?'

'It's just… you look… do you know von Rossbach?' he asked.

'Yes. He's my cousin.' It continued to look straight forward, its sunglasses remaining in place even as the sun set.

'Because you look just like him,' Marco said.

'Like twins,' the Terminator agreed. 'Except for our eyes. Those are different.'

Certainly its eyes were. They were glass, the very best available, but still noticeable eventually to even the most unobservant human. Hence the dark glasses.

'Oh,' Cassetti said. Well, that explains a lot. This must be some family matter, he supposed. Dieter was probably getting into things they were afraid might disgrace the family. If he was freely consorting with gunrunners and terrorists they had reason to be fearful.

'How much longer?' the Terminator asked.

'About thirty minutes,' Marco said. 'It will be dark when we get there.' There was no answer from his passenger, so Cassetti mentally supplied one.

Good.

About twenty silent minutes later Marco pulled the car off the main road and onto a narrow, but drivable track.

'If we go any further on the road,' he explained, 'they'll see us coming. There's a bit of a walk to the house, but I didn't think you wanted to be seen.'

'No.' The Terminator sat unmoving, the case in its lap.

That stillness was working on Cassetti, making him very uneasy. So were the bugs and the sounds and the indecipherable rustles and clicks. This wasn't how the world was supposed to smell, or feel, or sound.

If the guy didn't speak occasionally and breathe, he'd have begun to fear he was dead. He'd read that ninjitsu taught its adherents how to be still, but this, this was something he imagined would make even them look fidgety by comparison.

'So what's in the case?' he asked casually.

'Surveillance equipment,' it lied. 'So I'm going up alone. It's very sensitive and I don't have much time, so I don't want any more interference than necessary. It's rented,' the Terminator continued. 'So you'll have to return it for me. We won't have time to go back to Griego before my flight. My employer will pay you extra for your inconvenience.'

'Oh, hey, that won't be necessary,' Marco protested, pleased.

'She will insist.'

Cassetti nodded absently as he worked out a new scenario. So this guy was von Rossbach's cousin, but apparently no relation to the beautiful blonde who had hired him because he kept referring to her as 'my employer.'

Maybe what happened was that von Rossbach had stolen something that he was offering for sale to all these underworld types and the blonde, who maybe ran an

old family company that manufactured weapons or something, was trying to get it back before von Rossbach could sell it and put innocent people in jeopardy.

And the cousin here was trying to recover his own family's lost honor by helping to bring his cousin to justice. Yeah, that worked. That sounded plausible. It had plot.

He turned off the headlights and cut the engine, coasting to a stop. 'The house is a quarter of a mile that way,' he said, opening his door.

'I'll find it,' the Terminator said. 'You stay here.'

It would kill Cassetti at the airport, it decided. Unless there was noise during the termination of Connor and her son and the human panicked. Yes, it would keep this resource alive unless and until it became inconvenient.

'There's a ravine over that way.' Cassetti pointed. 'It goes right by their house and makes a good place to observe from.'

The Terminator looked in the direction the human was pointing and saw it immediately. 'Yes,' it said. 'Stay here.' And it moved off. On-site, it sent to Serena. Approaching target.

Serena, at dinner with Jordan Dyson, was distracted for a fraction of a second.

Understood. Continue. Out. She felt a little shiver of pleasure pass over her skin as she contemplated finally, finally, seeing the end of that miserable pair.

As she looked at Dieter Sarah could feel Suzanne Krieger falling away like an old coat. In a way it was a relief. Even as she regretted the loss of her life here in Villa Hayes, she had to admit that Suzanne and her concerns were, well…

Suzanne was a hausfrau. Suzanne was content to vegetate in a small town.

Suzanne is boring. She had opened her mouth to speak when a noise interrupted her.

Growling.

The puppy had jumped up onto all fours and its nose was pointed to the picture window toward the slatted vents above it. It growled again, a shocking sound from an animal so soppy-friendly and so young, and its slightly shaggy brown-gray coat was bristling as if it had been plunged into a giant electrostatic generator. Then it barked, hard and hostile.

Mother and son looked at each other, with a dawning horror in each pair of eyes.

'John!' Dieter exclaimed, pointing. 'Down!' And he threw himself forward off the couch.

In the split second before the big man's hands dragged him to the floor, John looked down and saw centered over his heart the telltale red dot of a laser sighting mechanism. A nanosecond before he moved, there came a sharp

'klack!' from the window, as though a pebble had been flung, hard, against it. A fuzzy-edged star appeared on the glass.

Sarah hit the floor and crawled over to the wall switch. In the moment before darkness fell she saw that Dieter had drawn a gun from somewhere. She hadn't even realized he was carrying.

My God, I've slowed down, she thought bitterly.

'Friends of yours?' she hissed, hoping against hope.

A glance at the cowering terror and teeth-baring rage of the puppy as it backed toward the kitchen killed… the hope that I'm being targeted by a ruthless covert-ops antiterrorist agency.

'No,' he snapped. 'Sector doesn't operate this way. It would be easier to simply arrest you, Sarah. And we definitely wouldn't deliberately target a sixteen-year-old boy!'

She didn't bother to answer.

The window was suddenly peppered with bullets, like a flurry of giant hailstones hitting the glass. It didn't break, but crazed into an opaque wall. Bulletproof glass, he realized. Clever. And, as it turned out, necessary.

John tipped over Sarah's chair, ignoring the hidden pistol, to rip out the fabric covering the bottom. Then he yanked the 12.7mm heavy Barrett sniper rifle out of the cradle that ran up its high fan-shaped back and crawled toward the kitchen, pushing the six-foot mass of steel and synthetics before him.

'Get ready,' Sarah told him. 'On three—one, two… three!'

She flung a switch and the outside yard was flooded with light.

Dieter opened his mouth and then closed it again with a snap. These weren't