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  Another shot, another broken window.

  “God damn,” Laughton said. “Where the hell is he shooting from?”

  Joe heard the second shot, felt the impact of the bullet as it hit the stage, and knew. The assassin was behind him. Inside the theater. And with all of the shielding facing out, away from the theater, Joe was a Goddamn sitting duck. It was amazing he was still alive. That second shot should have killed him.

  It should have, but it hadn’t. The son of a bitch had missed.

  Joe dove off the stage headfirst, weapon drawn, shouting instructions to his men and to the FInCOM agents who were surrounding him. Cowboy was on the roof of the theater, for God’s sake. They could cut the shooter off, nail the bastard.

  Inside the surveillance van, the video monitors went blank. Power was gone. Lord, what was happening out there? Veronica had heard Joe’s voice. He was alive, thank God. He hadn’t been killed. Yet.

  The gunman was inside the theater. Upper balcony, above the lobby, came the reports. The back door was surrounded, they had the assassin cornered.

  Veronica stood, pushing past Kevin Laughton and opening the door of the van. She could see the theater, see the two shattered windows. She could see the FInCOM agents crouched near the front of the theater. She could see three figures, scaling the outside of the theater, climbing up to the roof.

  God in heaven, it was Joe and two of his SEALs.

  Veronica lowered her mouthpiece into place. She hadn’t wanted to speak before this, afraid she’d only add to the confusion, but this…

  “Joe, what are you doing?” she said into the microphone. “You’re the target! You’re supposed to get to safety!”

  “We need radio silence,” Blue’s voice commanded. “Right now. Except for reports of tango’s location.”

  “Joe!” Veronica cried.

  One of the FInCOM agents leaned out the van door. “I can’t cut this line,” he said to Veronica, “so unless you’re quiet, I’m going to have to take your headset.”

  Veronica shut her mouth, watching as a tiny figure—Cowboy—helped Joe and the rest of his team up onto the theater roof.

  Up on the roof, Joe looked around. There was one door, leading to stairs that would take them down.

  You all right? Cowboy hand-signaled to Joe.

  Fine, he signaled back.

  The gunman surely had a radio, and was probably monitoring their spoken conversation. From this point on, the SEALs would communicate only with hand signals and sign language. No use tipping the gunman off by letting him know they were coming.

  Harvard had an extra HK submachine gun, and he handed it to Joe with a tight smile.

  Another shot rang out.

  “Agent down,” came West’s voice over Joe’s earphone. “Oh, man, we need a medic!”

  “T’s location stable,” said another voice. “Holding steady in the lobby balcony.”

  “Get that injured man out of the line of fire,” Laughton commanded.

  “He’s dead,” West reported, his normally dispassionate voice shaken. “Freeman’s dead. The bastard plugged him through the eye. The sonuvabitch—”

  Let’s go, Joe signaled to his men. I’m on point.

  Blue gestured to himself. He wanted to lead the way instead. But Joe shook his head.

  Soundlessly he opened the door and started down the stairs.

  Another shot.

  More chaos. Another agent was hit with unerring accuracy.

  “Stay down,” Laughton ordered his men. “This guy’s a sharpshooter and he’s here for the long haul. Let’s get our own shooters in position.”

  Silently, with deadly stealth, fingers on the triggers of their submachine guns, the SEALs moved down the stairs.

  Veronica paced. She hadn’t heard Joe’s voice in many long minutes. She could no longer see any movement on the roof.

  “One of the cameras is back on,” someone said from inside the surveillance van, and she went back in to see.

  Sure enough, the video camera that had been dropped and left on the stage had come back to life. It now showed a sideways and somewhat foggy picture of the theater lobby. Behind the reflections in the remaining glass windows, Veronica could see the shadowy shape of the assassin on the upper balcony.

  It was quiet. No one was moving. No one was talking. Then…

  “FInCOM shooters, hold your fire.” It was Joe’s voice, loud and clear, over the radio.

  Veronica felt herself sway, and she groped for her seat. Joe and his SEALs were somewhere near the gunman—in range of the FInCOM agent’s guns. Please, God, keep him safe, she prayed.

  A door burst open. She heard it more than she saw it on the shadowy video screen.

  The gunman turned, firing a machine gun rather than his rifle. But there was no one there.

  Another door opened, on the other side of the balcony, but the gunman had already moved. Using some sort of rope, he swung himself over the edge and down to the first floor.

  Veronica saw Joe before the gunman did.

  He was standing in the lobby, gun aimed at the man scurrying down the rope. She knew it was Joe from his gleaming white jacket. The three other SEALs were dressed in dull brown.

  “Hold it right there, pal,” she heard Joe say over her headphones. “We can end this game one of two ways. We can either take you out of here in a body bag, or you can drop your weapons right now and we’ll all live to see tomorrow.”

  The gunman was frozen, unmoving, halfway down the rope as he stared at Joe.

  Then he moved. But he didn’t drop his gun, he brought it up, fast, aimed directly toward Joe’s head.

  The sound of gunfire over the radio was deafening.

  The gunman jumped to the ground—or did he fall? Who had been hit? And where was Joe…?

  “Joe!” Veronica couldn’t keep silent another second as she leaned closer to the blurry screen.

  “Do you need medical assistance?” a voice asked over the headphones.

  “Alpha Squad, check in,” Blue’s voice ordered. “McCoy.”

  “Becker.”

  “Jones.”

  “Catalanotto,” Joe’s familiar, husky voice said. “We’re all clear. No need of a medic, FInCOM.”

  Veronica closed her eyes and rested her head on her arms on the tabletop.

  “This stupid sonuvabitch just made himself a martyr for the cause,” Joe’s voice said into her ear.

  Joe was alive. It was all over, and Joe was alive.

  This time.

  18

  It was after nine o’clock in the evening—twenty-one hundred hours—before Veronica’s phone rang.

  She’d been busy all afternoon and evening with meetings and debriefings. She’d worked with Ambassador Freder and Senator McKinley, scheduling the remainder of Prince Tedric’s tour. A report had come in from FInCOM that made them all breathe easier. The assassin had been ID’d as Salustiano Vargas—Diosdado’s former right-hand man. Former. Apparently the two terrorists had parted ways, and Vargas was no longer connected with the Cloud of Death. He had been acting on his own. Why? No one seemed to know. At least not yet. At any rate, Vargas was dead. He’d be giving them no answers.

  But now that the assassin was no longer a threat, the ambassador and senator wanted to get the tour back on track. Tedric was flying in from the District of Columbia. He would meet them all in Seattle in the morning, where they would board a cruise ship to Alaska. They would finish the tour with a flourish.

  Security would return to near normal. Two or three FInCOM agents would remain, but everyone else, including the SEALs—including Joe—would go home.

  At dinnertime, Veronica had searched for Joe, but was told he was in high-level security debriefings. She returned to her room to pack, but couldn’t stop thinking. What if he didn’t get finished before morning? Sometimes those meetings went on all night. What if she didn’t see him before she had to leave…?

  But then, at nine o’clock, the phone rang. Veronica closed her ey