Nakamura left the four-wheeler, activated his chameleonware suit, and hiked up in the darkness to look down onto the monastery. His pupils dilated in the moonlight. Enhanced rod and cone density sucked up every available photon. The scene was leached of color, but as bright as day to his eyes. That thrill of the mission, of being on the edge of danger, of discovery, of action, tickled up his spine again.

The monastery complex was walled, roughly oval, with a handful of buildings, a wide open courtyard, two entrances large enough for vehicles to come through.

The autopsies revealed that one man had died from bone fragments driven into his brain. Two had died from broken necks. The last from a crushed larynx.

Sam could have done that, Nakamura thought. She always liked to go for the throat.

He pulled up orbital reconnaissance photos of the site in his mind’s eye. Retinal implants superimposed them on his vision. Remote Vietnam was not a high priority target for the National Reconnaissance Office, but with more than three hundred recon birds circling in low earth orbit, now, and most of them taking frames five hundred miles square, every patch of the planet was photographed at least once an hour.

Those photos had revealed two hard-top four-wheel drive vehicles hidden in the brush, off-road, a few hundred yards from the back entrance. They’d been there for three hours before the shootings.

Then, next frame. An open-top jeep is now in the courtyard. Dozens of monks out there as well.

Next frame, almost an hour later. All three vehicles are gone. Multiple bodies lie prone.

The police had found tire tracks, but no vehicles. The assailants had run.

Three monasteries attacked. They were bounty hunters, he was sure, seeking the ten million dollar reward ERD had offered for Lane’s live capture.

Nakamura tried to imagine the scene as it had played out here. The bounty hunters, closing in on Lane, somehow knowing where he would be, then surprised to find Sam at his side. Four of them dead in seconds. The other two, in the trucks, frightened, taking off to save their own skins.

Yes, that could have happened.

But most importantly, where was Sam now? How would she think? No. How would Lane think?

Nakamura closed his eyes, thought back to everything he knew about Lane. He’d spent eight weeks with the boy, two or three hours a day, training him. Lane had been a hopeless liar, too nervous, too earnest. Not a natural-born deceiver. Not a killer, either. Not a monster. But someone who resented the ERD, hated it for what it had done to him and others he loved. Hated it enough to be willing to coerce Sam, turn her into his personal bodyguard.