Still, Czerny was a consummate professional; he would expect Janson to be waiting for him outside. He would take precautions.

Janson heard the man’s heavy footsteps, even sooner than he had expected. Just as he reached the threshold, though, Czerny loosed a spray of bullets, sweeping around an almost 180-degree range. Anybody lying in wait for him outside would have been struck by the wildly chattering submachine gun. Janson admired Czerny’s efficiency and forethought as he watched the gunman’s pivoting torso—from behind.

Now he rose up from where he was hidden, by the staircase on the very floor of the burning parlor, perilously near the gathering conflagration—the one place the gunman would not have expected.

As Czerny directed another raking fusillade at the grounds outside, Janson lunged, lashing his arm around the gunman’s neck, his fingers hurtling toward the trigger enclosure, tearing the weapon from his hands. Czerny thrashed violently, but rage made Janson unstoppable. He smashed his right knee into Czerny’s kidney and dragged him onto the stone porch. Now he scissored the man’s waist with his legs and forced his neck into a painful backward arch.

“You and I are going to spend some quality time together,” Janson said, his lips close to Czerny’s ear.

With an almost supernal effort, Czerny reared up and threw Janson off him. He ran down the yard, away from the burning house. Janson raced after him, taking him down with a powerful shoulder tackle, throwing him to the stony ground. Czerny let out a groan as Janson sharply wrenched one of his arms upward behind him, simultaneously dislocating the arm and turning him over onto his back. Tightening his grip on the man’s neck, he leaned in close.

“Now, where was I? That’s right: if you don’t tell me what I want to hear, you’ll never speak again.” Janson yanked a combat blade from a holster in Czerny’s belt. “I will peel the skin off your face until your own mother wouldn’t recognize you. Now come clean—you still with Consular Operations?”

Czerny laughed bitterly. “Goddamn overgrown Eagle Scouts—that’s all they were. Should have been selling cookies door-to-door, for all the difference they made, any of them.”

“But you’re making a difference now?”

“Tell me something. How the fuck do you live with yourself? You’re a piece of shit and you always were. I’m talking way back. The shit you pulled—you goddamn traitor. Somebody once tried to help you, a trueblue hero, and how did you repay him? You gave him up, turned him in, pushed him in front of a firing squad. That should have been you at Mesa Grande, you son of a bitch—that should have been you!”