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  Checking his utility vest, Jack pulled tight on the straps that bound his equipment to his back and began the night climb. He moved up the vertical face, wasting no motion, relaxing any muscle not currently in use, exerting the bare minimum of effort where such effort was required.

  Sixty feet up, a broad ledge protruded outward from the wall, blocking his path toward the top. Jack considered a sideways traverse, but his current path took him directly to the water collection trough at the infinity edge of Altmann’s pool. Jack loved people with a taste for beauty. When they opened themselves to a view, they created a window of vulnerability. It was a vulnerability that Conrad Altmann relied upon this vertical cliff face to block. Tonight that wasn’t going to work out for him.

  Releasing his right hand and leaning back, Jack felt along the base of the overhang. Finding a crack in the surface, he thrust his palm up inside and balled his fist. Satisfied with the handhold, he released his left hand and dangled free. Rotating his body, Jack managed to get his right toes into the same crack and levered his body outward until his left hand found a new handhold on the overhang’s lip.

  Releasing his right toe hold, Jack dangled beneath the ledge, both arms spread wide. Jack released his right hand from the crack and used the momentum of the swing to establish a toe hold for his left foot. Pulling himself up with his left arm, Jack managed to find a firm handhold for his right hand. Two more moves carried him up the wall to a place with two decent footholds where he could pause to let his ragged breathing slow to normal.

  At the moment, he wasn’t loving the sixty-pound pack on his back. But he’d damn sure like it once he got all the way to the top.

  It took him another ten minutes to reach the bottom of the stone and concrete wall that marked the back edge of the pool. Just above him, the splash of water pouring over the infinity edge and into the recycling catch basin sounded abnormally loud. The scent of chlorine wafted down on the cool night breeze, but he heard no late-night bathers. Not that he’d expected any. Apparently, here at Altmann’s torture compound, 2:00 A.M. on a Thursday morning wasn’t pool party or hot tub worthy.

  Jack moved higher, grasped the edge of the catch basin, and began working his way to the right, toward the spot where the hot tub rose up above the level of the pool deck. Once more Jack paused to rest. A glance at the pale cyan numerals on his wrist watch confirmed the time: 2:06 A.M.

  There was a problem with six-hour guard shifts, especially this time of night. They were two hours too long for all but the most highly trained and motivated individuals to maintain focus. And long, boring stretches in the wee hours of the night made people groggy, even if they were deployed in pairs. This shift had come on duty at 9:00 P.M. and was due to be relieved in just under an hour. Exactly as Jack had planned it.

  Reaching the spot he wanted, Jack hauled himself up, letting the side of the hot tub and the night shadows hide him from any guard who might happen to glance this way. Removing his backpack and setting it to the side, he took the H&K from its slot on his utility vest. Jack checked to ensure the linear inertial decoupler and suppressor were still screwed tight to the threaded barrel. Satisfied, he removed a wire-thin, fiber-optic periscope, adjusted its angle, and looked into the eyepiece, letting the tiny far lens poke up over the rim of the hot tub. Sweeping it slowly side to side, both low and high, he saw no sign of the roving guards.

  His senses amped up with a fresh adrenaline rush, Jack wasn’t surprised. If the guards had been closer, he would have sensed them. But the real danger inside this compound was Janet Price. He would rather have had her at his side on this one, but he didn’t, so he’d just have to deal with it.

  Having spent the last two days gathering and committing to memory the blueprints, along with the electrical wiring and plumbing plans for this facility, Jack was as ready as he could be.

  Unstrapping the fifty-meter rope from the side of his backpack, Jack secured it to one of the decorative boulders beside the hot tub with an end-of-the-line bowline knot and a couple of half hitches. Jack gave it a stout tug. Satisfied, he tossed the length of rope out over the cliff and laid a thick pair of rappelling gloves on the ground next to it. Then he fastened a black tactical rappelling harness around his legs and waist, and attached a carabiner to its left side. It wasn’t comfortable to move around in, but when he needed to get out of here, it would be a hell of a lot faster to already be wearing it.

  Jack made one final inspection of his utility vest: two flash-bang grenades, two high-explosive grenades, a half-dozen spare magazines for the H&K, infrared goggles, infrared flashlight, flexible fiber-optic periscope, two throwing knives, and his SAF survival knife. Except for a pouch containing a few additional tools, the silenced H&K in his right hand, and the specialized electrical kit in his left, it had all the extras that he’d be carrying when he made his move.

  When Jack moved, he slipped from behind the hot tub and alongside the house’s west wing. Staying below the level of the windows, he moved along the wall and then across the narrow space that separated it from the three-sided shed that housed the electrical and pool equipment. Spotting the breaker boxes, the telephone, and alarm wiring cabinets, Jack knelt beside them.

  Setting his electrical kit on the ground, Jack slipped on the infrared goggles and grabbed his IR flashlight. Opening the alarm panel, he switched the flashlight on. A quick scan of the wiring brought a smile to his lips. It was a perfect match for the wiring diagram for which he’d paid such an inflated price. That was good. It meant there was one less person Jack would have to hunt down and teach why it wasn’t a good idea to double-cross The Ripper.

  Clipping four bypass leads into the patch panel, Jack switched on the device that would make everything in the security center look normal, and then snipped two wires. Expectantly, Jack tilted his head, listening for the alarms that should have blared throughout the compound. But he heard nothing.

  As he closed the alarm panel and prepared to move back into the shadows, Jack felt the familiar call of danger. When the guard stepped around the corner, his form ghostly white in the IR goggles, Jack’s H&K spit two bullets. The slap of the man’s body hitting the ground was louder than the spit-spat of silenced gunfire. But as he dragged the corpse deep into the moon shadow, Jack felt a new danger awaken inside the main house.

  It was a feeling he’d missed for far too long.

  CHAPTER 50

  In her dream, Janet stood in sunlight atop a high pinnacle, her gaze directed far out over pastoral farmlands. Somehow she knew this was a wizard’s trap, set to ensnare the mighty black dragon. On the horizon, she saw . . . something. In the distance, clouds boiled up in a supernatural profusion, as if they danced to a tune that only Beelzebub could play. But this time, a dread minstrel stepped forth, his fingers strumming a flashing lute, his melodious voice humming forbidden chords.

  “Jack!”

  The name slipped from her lips as she sat bolt upright in bed.

  Swinging her legs out from under the covers, Janet rose to her feet, naked. She didn’t know why it surprised her. Whenever she wasn’t on a mission, she’d always slept naked. But she was on a mission, so why the hell had she stripped down for bed?

  Then she remembered. Tupac. For the second day in a row, she’d tortured a man whose mere presence made her want to be a better person. All in the name of her mission. It made her want to throw up. It made her want to get clean. So Janet had showered for so long that she thought she might shed her wrinkly skin. But when she’d crawled naked beneath the sheets, Janet had still felt dirty.

  But now, although she didn’t know how, Janet felt Jack somewhere out there in the night, burning white-hot. It was more than a feeling. It was a certainty. Her ex-lover had come here to free Tupac Inti or die trying. She’d seen it in his eyes at the house in Santa Cruz. But in her presence, he’d slept, peaceful as a lamb. The lamb of God.

  The idea struck her as funny. Jack Gregory might be many things, but he would never be God’s lamb.
/>   Janet dressed in the dark, her movements so quiet that even Jack couldn’t have heard them. With her Glock in her right hand, Janet moved to the closed door and paused to listen. The post-midnight silence was unbroken. But some small sound must have awakened her. Either that or Jack had infected her with some of his crazy voodoo. Right now, Janet really hoped it was the former.

  As she gripped the brass doorknob, she froze. She’d heard something, the faintest of sounds from outside. It had been a soft scraping noise, possibly the dragging footstep of a roving guard, but Janet didn’t think so. Taking a long, slow breath, Janet readied herself.

  Time to go find out.

  CHAPTER 51

  Looking to make sure he didn’t have more company, Jack lifted the guard’s body from the ground and carried it into the electrical shed, laying it down next to the pool pumps. He’d been quiet, but not completely silent. If someone had heard him, that person would be coming to investigate. But anyone who came looking would soon be dead.

  With the IR goggles still in place, Jack risked a glance outside the shack. Seeing no sign of infrared body heat, he ducked low and moved rapidly past the hot tub and pool, reaching the east wing. As he rounded the corner, he heard a sliding glass door open on the far side of the pool, along the west wing that he’d just left behind. That wing held the two guest bedrooms, and Jack had a pretty good idea who had just stepped out of one of them to scan the pool deck for signs of an intruder.

  If Jack was right and it was Janet Price, he didn’t want to engage her in conversation. And he damn sure didn’t want to get into a gun fight with her. She might be good enough to kill him, or even worse, he might kill her. What he wanted was to get inside the east wing, take the stairs to the basement level, find Tupac, and get them both the hell out of here. Hopefully, Janet wouldn’t walk all the way to the back edge of the infinity pool and look down to see his pack and the climbing rope he’d left hanging down the cliff face. If she did that or if she checked out the electrical shed, Jack would be moving to plan B real fast.

  Jack listened and waited, his mental clock ticking through four minutes before he heard the quiet, booted footsteps retreat back into the house, followed by the sound of the sliding back doors closing. Jack remained still and silent for another minute, knowing that just because the 3:00 A.M. shift change had been late on both nights he’d watched them didn’t mean he could rely on it. If it came right down to it, he’d prefer to finish what he had to do under the sleepy eyes of tired guards than deal with fresh ones. And the shift change would result in the discovery of the missing guard’s body.

  Moving to the window on the north side of the east wing, Jack removed the screen and attached a suction cup device that anchored a specialized glass cutter, designed to quietly cut a hand-sized circle in the pane of glass to which it was attached. Applying just enough pressure to keep the glass from chattering, Jack gave the handle two 360 degree turns followed by a gentle tap with his palm. The glass circle came free, clutched in the grasp of the suction cup.

  Jack reached through the hole, undid the latch, and slid the window open. He had no worries that the room might be occupied. This was Conrad Altmann’s master bedroom, and he would never allow others to sleep in his bed while he was gone. And because the neo-Nazi godfather hadn’t had a meaningful long-term relationship for the last three years, any encounter that brought someone here to share this bed would be of the one-night-stand variety.

  Moving the closed curtain aside, Jack stepped into the dark room. Through the infrared goggles everything took on a green tinge. Though there was nobody to give off that white-hot body glow, all of the objects in the room, from the floor to the ceiling, were at slightly different temperatures. The different materials all conducted heat with different efficiency. And the house was kept warmer than outside, so the walls, windows, and tile floor looked cooler than the furniture or throw rugs.

  The bed was positioned against the wall on Jack’s left, bracketed by an open closet door and the opening to the master bath. On his right, the sliding glass doors that offered access to the pool area were currently covered by a heavy sliding curtain. With no desire to go through Altmann’s dresser drawers, Jack walked across the room to the closed door on the south wall.

  Once more, Jack paused to listen to the rhythms of this sleeping house. Except for the hum of the central heating, he heard nothing. But something sure as hell called to him—multiple somethings. It wasn’t as if Jack could see through walls, like some of the new tech gear let you do. The sensation was more akin to his sense of smell. It was as if he were hungry and suddenly caught a whiff of Aunt May’s hot turkey dressing, fresh from the oven. Knowing where the kitchen was, it was easy to arrive at the smell’s origin. Absent that knowledge, tracking down the source took considerably more effort.

  When Jack opened the door, he found himself at the junction of an L-shaped hall. The part that led to his left ended at a door that Jack knew opened onto a stairwell that led to the basement. Tupac Inti was imprisoned somewhere down there. And though Jack felt a tug from that direction, an even stronger attraction pulled him into the section of hall that led straight ahead to the south.

  From the blueprints, Jack knew this hall led to a door on the left that opened into Altmann’s study. There was another door straight ahead that led into the three-car garage and to a large opening into the formal dining room on his right.

  At the corner where the right wall gave way to the dining room, Jack stopped again to listen. But nothing called to him from that direction. The same could not be said of the study door to the left. Jack reached for the door handle and suddenly felt cold sweat bead his brow.

  Jack stepped through the door and closed it behind him. He looked around the study through the IR goggles, its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and twin reading chairs painted ghostly green, experiencing something he’d only felt once before in his life. The memory played so brightly on the theater screen of his mind that it froze him in place.

  The wind howls through the high peaks of the Andes, driving the cold in through the chinks in the log walls of my command cabin and making me long to remove the heavy armor that siphons away my body heat. But that is not to be. Outside, in the frigid morning air, my mounted Spaniards await.

  My desire drives me out into the pale winter sun, anxious to mount my horse and travel to meet with the Sapa Inca, Atahualpa. In truth, I care nothing for my puppet emperor. It is his silver staff with its golden crown piece that infects my dreams with unquenchable longing and unspeakable dread.

  I know that Atahualpa will not part with it while he lives, and if my senior officers find out what I intend, some of them will try to stop me. But in this, I cannot be stymied. For even at the cost of my life, I must possess it.

  CHAPTER 52

  Having heard nothing as she stood silently on the pool deck, Janet turned and walked back inside, shutting the sliding glass door behind her. What the hell was going on with her head? She’d been dreaming and then awakened, convinced that Jack Gregory was here. She didn’t believe in superstitious crap like that. She’d thought she heard something in the night, but the sound hadn’t been repeated, even though she’d stood on the pool deck, watching and listening for several minutes.

  What she needed was to go back to bed and get three more hours sleep before she started her day with a workout in Altmann’s garage gym. But as she reached the door to her guest bedroom, she stopped. This felt wrong. She’d heard something, and no matter how much seeing Jack again had screwed with her head, she hadn’t started imagining things. If it wasn’t Jack, she had nothing to worry about. But if Jack had somehow slipped into the compound, he would go for Tupac. And that was something she couldn’t allow.

  Janet felt the weight of the Glock in her right hand. Now she understood what had to be done. She turned to her left, away from the bedroom door, and walked down the hallway toward the front of the house. She bypassed Altmann’s office as the living room opened up before her. Just
enough moonlight penetrated the high clouds to make the couches, coffee table, and easy chair visible against the large window that faced the helipad.

  With the Glock held in a shooter’s stance, Janet turned toward the east wing, passed the foyer on her right, the kitchen on her left, and entered the dining room. Turning left past the study, she entered the hallway that led to the master bedroom. But she wasn’t headed there. Instead, Janet walked down the short hallway to her right and opened the door to the dark stairwell.

  Ignoring the beckoning light switch, Janet stepped inside and silently closed the door behind her. Right now, the darkness was her friend. She’d been up and down these stairs so many times the last couple of days that she could see them clearly in her mind. Careful to step lightly, Janet descended the stairs, pausing briefly at the basement level to listen. She was tempted to continue on down to the dungeon level, but tactically this was the place that beckoned to her.

  Here the landing opened directly into the basement. But to continue on down to the dungeon meant opening two ancient metal doors that creaked and groaned on their hinges. Altmann could have had repaired them, but he loved the way those sounds echoed down into the lower level, telegraphing the bad news of his coming to any guests who waited in the cells below.

  Janet didn’t think Jack had beat her down here. She would have heard those doors opening and closing. For now she didn’t give a damn whether he came from above or below. This was the place he would have to pass if he wanted to get Tupac out.

  Letting her memory of the large room guide her through the inky blackness, Janet stepped behind one of the support beams, aimed her Glock back toward the stairwell, and waited. In the perfect darkness, Janet didn’t need to see the front and rear gun sights to know one thing. Even The Ripper couldn’t get past her here.