“Uh huh.” Whitman stepped forward, flicked open a plastic lighter, and set fire to el-Habib’s beard.

The reaction was almost instantaneous. After a split second of shock, the Saudi tried to raise his hands to bat away the flames. Whitman watched as the Saudi squirmed and twisted, screaming and cursing while the flames turned his beard to charcoal wisps, and then began to eat at the skin of his face.

El-Habib kept screaming, his eyes opened wide and staring, the whites showing all around. “Stop it!” he panted. “Stop it!”

“I can’t,” Whitman said, “you won’t let me.”

“What … what are you talking about?”

“You won’t talk to me, el-Habib, or whatever the fuck your name is. And as soon as the fire eats its way through your jaw, you won’t be able to talk to anyone.”

“All right! All right!” Tears were rolling down the Saudi’s cheeks, sizzling as they met the flames. “I’m dying here!”

“Not yet you aren’t.”

Whitman used his forearms to snuff out the flames, but the lower half of el-Habib’s face was black, red, wet, and raw. He was hysterical, cycling between screaming out his pain and sobbing.

“Sit still.” Whitman crouched down in front of el-Habib. “Fear not,” he said, his voice gentle now as he snapped open his first-aid kit. “I’ll take care of you.”

*   *   *

No sooner had St. Vincent returned with Lucy Orteño to his office, than he received an urgent message for him to come down to IESAC—Integrated Electronic Surveillance and Command. Parking the girl with Jonah Dickerson, his SIC, his second in command, he hauled ass down the stairs three levels, used the fingerprint scanner to gain access.

IESAC was as large as an airplane hangar. It existed belowground, and was far larger than the footprint of the building above it. Thirty monitoring stations, manned round the clock, ranged along the right side of the space. To the left was the semicircular bank where five analysts worked collating the high-priority signals and assigning operatives to deal with them.

St. Vincent was not encouraged to see his boss, General Lewis Serling, standing with his hands locked behind his back, staring at one of five screens arrayed like a cross.

“We’ve lost the signal, Luther,” he said as St. Vincent came up.

Not wanting to show his ignorance, St. Vincent chose an agnostic reply. “I have a lot of signals out, Director.”

“This is the only one that concerns me,” General Serling said in his trademark rasp, caused by forty years of smoking three packs a day.

His lungs might be black as night, St. Vincent thought, but he was as healthy as a college athlete. Some humans were just built that way. He stared at the general’s forest of ear hair before saying, “And why does it bring you down to IESAC?”

“Because,” Serling said slowly and carefully, “it belongs to Bluto.”