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  “Pedigree records, award certificates, and point breakdowns for every phase of training. Everything signed and sealed by Schutzhund master officials,” Anagkazo said. “I included our owner’s information packet and guarantees of course—”

  “The dogs have Level-Three titles?”

  “And other special ones besides,” Anagkazo said. “You’re getting really terrific animals. Lido, Sorge, and Arek. They’re littermates, pure-black shepherd males from west German working lines. The dogs have to be a minimum of twenty months old to qualify for Level-Three certification, and I spent an extra four months training them for advanced titles in protection and tracking. You won’t find too many around that have earned the trial scores they did.” He shrugged. “But I should show and not tell. Greg must be set by now, and you’re probably anxious to meet your new best friends for yourself.”

  Kuhl looked at him.

  “Yes,” he said. “Very much so.”

  They rose and went toward the door.

  On the grass about thirty feet from the cabin, Anagkazo’s helper had gotten the three coal-black German shepherds out through the van’s side panel. A broad, hulking man who stood well over six feet tall, he waited beside it holding them on a leather multiple-dog leash clipped to their steel choke collars. Motionless, they sat side by side at his heel.

  Kuhl studied Clayton’s oversize flannel shirt and baggy coveralls, noted the odd bunching over his arms, legs and chest, and realized his huge appearance was due in some measure to concealed body padding.

  Anagkazo turned to Kuhl outside the cabin door. “Your assistant told me you’d be interested in protection,” he said. “Alone up here on the mountain, that’s a sensible requirement. Having owned Schutzhunds before, you’re probably familiar with what I’m about to say, but some people don’t appreciate that effective guard work goes with obedience and control”—he interlocked two fingers—“like this. You can’t separate them. Over-aggressiveness is considered a flaw either in a dog’s inbred disposition or trained behavior. It shouldn’t display any aggression unless ordered. They’re protection dogs, not guard dogs in the ordinary sense… they only do what their owner tells them, won’t attack anyone without his direct command.”

  Kuhl gave him a silent nod.

  “We’re going to demonstrate how those important qualities I mentioned combine in a simulated protective engagement,” Anagkazo said. “The reason Greg’s wearing a hidden bite suit, and not the ordinary kind that would fit outside his regular clothes, is because an intruder ’s going to be dressed in regular clothes. We want to be sure our dogs will perform under realistic conditions. It’s part of the extra training I mentioned before, and not even necessary for Level-Three certification.” He paused. “Don’t be disturbed when Greg brings out his pistol. It’s a Bruni practice gun… looks and sounds like the real thing, but chambered for firing blanks.”

  Kuhl smiled at him. “Thank you for the warning,” he said.

  Anagkazo waved to his helper as a signal to get started. Let off the leash, the dogs remained heeled in position at Clayton’s side until Anagkazo called out to them. Then they sprang onto all fours and came rushing over to him at once like a midnight wind.

  “Sit,” he said in a firm voice.

  The shepherds obeyed without hesitation. Kuhl studied them. They were truly impressive: wide-boned, thick-furred, and muscular, with triangular ears erect above the domes of their large shaggy heads.

  Anagkazo signaled again.

  “Okay, Greg!” he shouted. “Roll it!”

  Clayton reached into a pocket of his coveralls for the training handgun. Kuhl noted it was indeed an accurate replica of a Colt 9-mm semiautomatic.

  Both hands around its grip, tilting its barrel slightly upward, the helper raised his gun, pulled the trigger. A shot cracked into the air, loud, its echoes bounding off and away into the nearby trees.

  Kuhl’s eyes went to the dogs. They were still. Perfectly still beside their trainer, facing Clayton across the grass.

  In this way, and perhaps others, Kuhl thought, their attitude was reminiscent of Ciras.

  Clayton gave the high-country silence scarcely a moment’s chance to settle back down around the cabin, and then shattered it with a second round of gunfire, a third, a fourth.

  More echoes reverberated through the treetops, scaring up birds everywhere on the ridge.

  Kuhl watched the dogs.

  None of them had shown any sign of startlement or so much as flinched. They just sat there staring at the man with the gun, their bright brown eyes fixed on him.

  Kuhl looked at Anagkazo. “They are in complete control of their natural impulses,” he said.

  The breeder nodded.

  “And without fear,” he said. “You’ll see what I mean.”

  Anagkazo waved a hand above his head yet another time. Clayton stepped toward the cabin, his pistol thrust out before him, the uptilt of its snout now barely perceptible even to Kuhl.

  Two shots crashed from it.

  “Attack!” Anagkazo commanded.

  The dogs hurtled forward, racing straight at Clayton, making no sound, midnight wind. The pistol was fired again, a series of rapid bursts, but they did not stop, kept on charging in his direction.

  He lowered his gun as the dogs reached him, aimed it at them.

  They lunged. One of them drove high, rose onto its hind legs, and Kuhl saw the flash of bared white fangs as its massive black jaws clamped over Clayton’s gun arm below the elbow. Another shepherd went for his right thigh. The third, his left ankle. Clayton twisted his body, shouting loud threats at the dogs, pulling them around with him, dragging them around with him, but they hung on, silent, silent, throwing their combined weight against him, finally making him lose his balance, forcing him off his feet. As he dropped hard onto his side, the pistol flew out of Clayton’s grasp, landed several feet away in a patch of grass.

  From Anagkazo now: “Hold!”

  The three German shepherds released his helper, backed off, and got onto their haunches without turning away from him, staying within a yard of the spot where Clayton had fallen, forming up in a close ring around him. They were still silent, their thick wooly tails whipping back and forth over the ground.

  Anagkazo turned to Kuhl.

  “Fearless, as promised,” he said. “They won’t budge until I call them down.”

  “And if the intruder were to run into the woods?” Kuhl was watching the dogs. “Try to escape rather than press ahead toward a confrontation?”

  “As long as you give the command, they’d track and find him no matter where he hides,” Anagkazo said. “Bear in mind you don’t have to be in danger or any extraordinary circumstances to get the same level of obedience from them. It extends to their routine behavior. Whether it’s walking beside you on the street, retrieving a Frisbee at a picnic, whatever. With these dogs there’s no negotiation.”

  Appreciating that last phrase, savoring it, Kuhl waited a long moment before he offered the breeder his reply.

  “Excellent, Mr. Anagkazo,” he said, then. “Truly excellent. That is just what I’d wanted to hear.”

  * * *

  Steve DeMarco was one of nine members of Sword’s advance team to have met the plane out at the landing field.

  A Boeing 737 freighter, it had flown in with about twenty thousand tons of cargo for the satcom ground station and fiber network head-end center going up near the Sette Cama Forest thirty miles south of Port-Gentil. The bulk of its load consisted of parts ordered by the horde of engineers, plumbers, and other specialized utility systems experts at work in the compound’s buildings. There were pallets of everyday office fixtures, including desks, chairs, computers, LAN modems, phones, fax machines, copiers, paper, toner cartridges, and so on. And there was an initial shipment of expensive upgrade and replacement components for the Planétaire optical communications infrastructure, such as long-haul light amplifiers, wavelength division multiplexers, demultiplexers, and routing de
vices. The telecom equipment alone was worth upward of a couple million dollars, which would have been reason enough for fully three-quarters of Nimec’s security contingent to be on hand for the Boeing’s reception.

  And they had another.

  A comparatively smaller portion of the valuable cargo transshipped to Gabon via UpLink Europe had been requisitioned by the Sword boys. This ranged from electrified perimeter fencing, ballistic glass panels, and concrete Jersey barricades for vehicle entry points to fancier hardware like fixed intruder-alert systems, countersurveillance sweep units, mobile robotic guards (dubbed “hedgehogs” by Rollie Thibodeau), and many of the same weapons and chembio threat detectors Thibodeau had described to Tom Ricci during their brief, strained catch-up session at UpLink San Jose. Also arriving with the Sword req were the first three of what would eventually grow into an entire fleet of armored-and-modified-to-order Land Rovers, and a delivery of weapons and gear Nimec’s team had been licensed to use for personal and facility defense under special agreement with Gabonese authorities. Among these were several crates of conventional firearms, third-generation “Big Daddy” variable-velocity rifle-system submachine guns, and other lethal and less-than-lethal munitions.

  Once the goods had been unloaded they were expedited to temporary warehouses, checked in, sorted, and prepped for final transport — and that was where Steve DeMarco and his teammates entered the picture. Everything was eventually headed out to the Sette Cama for on-site storage and distribution, begging careful supervision as the first loads were transferred onto off-road trucks and heavy lift choppers by airport personnel. Four of the Sword ops had ridden with the wheeled convoy along remote jungle roads, which might present tempting ambush points to thieves and hijackers. Each of the two birds making the initial air run had swept off with a guard of its own. As agent in charge, DeMarco had also assigned three men to the warehouse beat until the rest of the freight was cleared out of them, a process expected to take seventy-two hours at the very least.

  With things well under control at the airport, DeMarco had gotten into his company vehicle and driven back to the Rio de Gabao. His plan was to freshen up in his room, then grab a bite to eat at the hotel restaurant before giving Pete Nimec the lowdown on the successful transit operation.

  He would wind up with a whole lot more to tell him.

  As he got out of the elevator, DeMarco’s curiosity had nudged him to give one of the new pieces of equipment that had arrived with the 737 a quick test. Though far from the most expensive or important item in the shipment, it was nonetheless a nifty little gadget… assuming it worked as touted. At a glance it appeared to be a long, thin silver cigarette lighter. Another version of the same device, designed to look like a key chain fob, had been chosen by some of the ops. To each his own.

  Whichever outer configuration was preferred, the miniature guts of the thing remained the same. Its true function was neither to fire up a smoke nor to help a person locate keys buried in a trouser pocket — although the latter was something the fob did quite handily because of its shape, perhaps accounting for its favored status in contrast to the fuel-less, wickless, single-purpose mock-cigarette lighter version. The device’s true function, at any rate, was to snoop out hidden surveillance cameras. Inside the case was a very low frequency directional receiver sensitive to electromagnetic emissions in the fifteen- to twenty-kilohertz range, corresponding to VLF levels radiated by the horizontal oscillators that typically allowed remote-operated cameras their side-to-side movement. The detector had two switchable modes of alert. At the touch of a button, it could signal the presence of a hidden camera with a discreet pulse similar to that given off by a cell phone set to silently vibrate, or sound a series of beeps through an attached headset. The closer it got to the source of the low-band radio emission, the faster a tiny red LED on the case would blink, allowing pinpoint location of the camera… in theory, insofar as DeMarco was concerned for the present. His trust in any gadget or weapon had to meet the same standard he applied to women: He would reserve judgment until he saw how well it treated him.

  Thus, DeMarco’s test. On his first day at the hotel, he had noticed a couple of minidome cameras in the hallway outside his room. The first to snag his careful eye was mounted flush with the ceiling near the elevator bank and might easily have been taken for one of the domed light fixtures with which it was aligned in a long row. The second minidome was more visibly mounted about two feet to the right of his door — and four or five feet above his head — in a corner formed by the juncture of the wall and ceiling. Neither bothered him by its presence. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Rio was a five-star hotel catering to upper-echelon international travelers. And any decent lodging nowadays was obliged to provide security for its guests. At its most basic, this would consist of an in-house security staff and twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week video monitoring of common areas.

  DeMarco’s idea was to give the camera near his door a covert pass with his detector simply to find out whether it would buzz and flash its little indicator light as touted. If the gadget worked, he would accept the good things he’d heard about it. Make it his steady, so to speak. If it didn’t, he would have to reevaluate their relationship and likewise warn his men against putting too much faith in it.

  As the Dylan song went, just like a woman.

  Now DeMarco turned down the hall toward his room, the locator nestled in his right palm. At the door he took his swipe-card key from his shirt pocket with his free hand and inserted it into the reader, simultaneously thumbing on the locator to pass it under the camera, keeping it turned away from the bug-eyed enclosure… just a weary guest about to give himself a little neck rub after a long morning of hustle and bustle.

  The gadget began to vibrate in mid-pass.

  Good, he thought.

  DeMarco brought it down between his shoulder blades with a smooth movement, raised it, slid his eyes onto the LED. It was blinking rapidly. He made an adequate show of massaging himself through his shirt, then lowered his right hand to his side, away from the overhead camera, and took another peak at the red light. The blinking slowed, stopped.

  Even better.

  Satisfied he’d gained a trustworthy companion, DeMarco pushed open his door and stepped into the room. He headed straight over to his dresser and tossed the card key on top of it, already unbuttoning his shirt below its open collar, eager to get under the refreshing shower spray and rinse the sweat and airport dust off his body. Although it was still well before noon, the outside temperature had to be somewhere in the upper eighties, and the soupy humidity made it feel even hotter.

  As he went to put his camera locator down beside the card, his finger on the power button to click it to the OFF setting, DeMarco felt a sudden vibrational shiver from it, and realized the LED was blinking through his fingers again.

  Rapidly.

  Very rapidly.

  His brows arched. Red light flickering between his knuckles, he continued to feel the silent pulsations of the locator’s alert signal. Then he thumbed it off, his eyes cutting left and right, taking in the room — its walls, ceiling, furnishings, picture frames, mirrors, central air-conditioning unit. Everything.

  DeMarco swore inwardly. Not moving his lips. Betraying no hint of surprise through a muttered word or gesture.

  After a moment he finished undressing, went into the shower, and turned on the tap, feeling tense and exposed, trying his best to act as if nothing were amiss.

  His equipment tryout had proven to be more informative than he’d bargained for. A lot more.

  He would have to talk to Pete Nimec right away.

  * * *

  After a night of bad dreams, Julia Gordian had hoped to shake off her mild funk at work Sunday, but the chill, gray weather was doing nothing to give her a lift.

  The shelter had been quiet since she’d arrived, Rob off to do his double-duty accounting out at the San Gregario Beach resort, Cynthia dealing with a colicky infant in their house d
own the lane, leaving Julia to mind things alone. She was okay with that part, but would have been happier if it weren’t such a slow day for adoption prospects. There were no appointments scheduled for that morning, and only two penciled in for the afternoon. Quiet, and the low mist pressing against the shop window added to her downbeat mood.

  Julia knelt over a bulk order of dog kibble delivered the day before, slid a box opener between the carton’s taped flaps, spread them open, and did a quick count of the three-pound bags inside against the total listed on the packing slip. Behind the counter with her, Vivian loafed on her cushion, raising her head off her crossed paws to nuzzle the carton with mild interest.

  “Thanks for the hardy assist, Viv. But everything’s here,” Julia said, scratching the grey behind her ears, which were folded like a bow on a bonnet — the left ear flipped limply to the right, the right flopped to the left, the two overlapping over the fine, tawny fur betwixt. “No shortages to report.”

  Viv produced a kind of whistling yawn, stretched, and rolled onto her back. Since being rebuffed by the Wurmans she had become Julia’s honorary sidekick, winning the position through charm and sympathy.

  Julia smiled at her with affection.

  “The tummy rub has to wait, kid,” she said. “I’ve got to earn my nonsalary.”

  Julia reached into the carton. And while she unpacked and filled the shelves, found herself thinking about the dreams.

  They had plagued her every so often since her divorce from Craig. Less often recently, but it seemed their run had not quite concluded and would recur for disturbing encore presentations anywhere between once and twice a month. Julia never knew what events would stir up the pockets of unconscious turbulence or why she’d go plunging into them on any given night. And she was stumped by their power to throw her out of whack almost two years after she’d last had any direct contact with her former husband. They were, like most dreams, insipid. Formulaic variations on a stock theme; confused, weak, even silly recalled in the light of day. But the sleeping mind was both captive audience and uncritical judge of its own regurgitated material, and they had once again kept her tossing and turning in bed.