Finally, Janson could make out the green-clad body of the sniper beneath him. He was a slender young man—some sort of prodigy, no doubt, but momentarily stunned by the fall. Janson lowered himself to the ground in a controlled drop, landing with his legs spread over the sniper.

Now he wrenched the rifle from the marksman’s hands.

“Damn!” the curse came out like a whisper. It was light in timbre, the voice of a youth.

Janson found himself holding a forty-inch rifle, hard to maneuver at such close distances. A modified M40A1, which was a bolt-action sniper rifle handmade at Quantico by specially trained armorers of the Marine Corps Marksmanship Unit.

“The tables are turned,” Janson said softly. He reached down and knotted the sniper’s collar around his neck, ripping off the radio communicator. He was still prone. Janson noticed his short, spiky brown hair, his slender legs and arms: not a formidable specimen of manhood at first glance. He started to pat the sniper down, removing a small .32-caliber Beretta Tomcat pistol from his waistband.

“Get your stinking hands off me,” the sniper hissed, and rolled over, glaring at Janson with a look of the purest venom.

“Christ,” Janson said, involuntarily. “You’re—”

“What?” A defiant glare.

Janson just shook his head. The sniper reared up and Janson responded with force, shoving the sniper back down to the ground. Then, once more, the two locked eyes.

The sniper was lithe-bodied, agile, surprisingly strong—and a woman.

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Like a wild animal, she lunged at him yet again, frantically trying to retrieve the Beretta pistol in his hand. Janson deftly stepped back and pointedly pulled back the slide lock with his thumb.

Her gaze kept returning to the Beretta.

“You’re overmatched, Janson,” she said. “No embassy lardasses this time. See, this time they cared enough to send the very best.” Her voice had the twang of the Appalachian backcountry, and though she was trying to sound conversational, the tension showed.

Was the bravado meant for him, or for her? Was she trying to demoralize him, or ginning up her own courage?

He put on a bland smile. “Now, let me make you a very reasonable proposition: You deal, or I kill you.”

She snorted. “Think you’re lookin’ at number forty-seven? In your dreams, old man.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That would make me number forty-seven.” When he did not reply, she added. “You’ve done forty-six people, right? I’m talking sanctioned, in-field killings.”

Janson’s face went cold. The number—which was never a source of pride and increasingly a source of anguish—was accurate. But it was also a count that few people knew.

“First things first,” Janson said. “Who are you?”

“What do you think?” the sniper replied.

“No games.” Janson pressed the muzzle of her M40A1 hard into her diaphragm.

She coughed. “Same as you—same as you were.”

“Cons Op,” Janson ventured.