A group of three, the men on the flanks brandishing weapons and hauling the man in the middle by the elbows. Slaton had to be sure, so he kept watching. When one of the guards stumbled he got a clear look and saw what he wanted—one clear band over the left shoulder. It wasn’t a brilliant difference—you would have to know to look for it in the first place—but the variance in thermal signature was conclusive. Two subtly discrete coefficients of heat retention in the cool evening air.

Scotchgard.

Hamedi.

For the first time Slaton’s finger engaged his trigger. The kidon knew who to kill.

*   *   *

Slaton submerged and began breathing again through the high-pressure regulator, kicking briskly to close the gap. Sight was useless in the pitch-black lake, so he went with dead reckoning, using his initial bearing and knowing precisely how fast he could swim at flank speed in full scuba gear—the kind of thing a kidon had to know.

He surfaced, by the luminescent hands of his Movado watch, twenty-eight seconds later, this time rising without any attempt at stealth. He saw a crewman trying to run the davit motors to lower the Whaler, but it was fast becoming an exercise in futility as the lake rose to meet Entrepreneur’s sinking stern. So the sailor waited, and when he had enough slack he simply untethered the runabout. The crewman was the first to climb in, and Hamedi went next, half-guided, half thrown into the boat by his minders, one large and one small, who quickly followed. As the crewman went to the helm, four more Iranians—looking ridiculous in dark business suits, orange life jackets, and carrying submachine guns—reached Entrepreneur’s disappearing stern. Two made the leap to the drifting Whaler. Two didn’t.

With the gap increasing between the boats, Slaton’s target was effectively separated and his defenses quantified. Four guards and a crewman had reached Hamedi, two others remained nearby. Slaton shifted from the viewing optic to the MP7’s sight. It was time to live by an assassin’s rules. Anyone with a weapon died. And those with the biggest weapons died first. From twenty yards his first target’s head appeared massive. Slaton widened his legs to stabilize in the water and settled his sight, already planning his next two shots. He gave a quick double tap, and a guard who was trying to step across—one leg on the yacht and another on the Whaler—crumbled into the divide between the boats. The second man on Entrepreneur, his semiautomatic still strapped to his chest, had a bullet in his head before his partner hit the water.