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Back The Janson Directive
Chapters (54)
  1. Title Page
  2. Table of Contents
  3. Prologue
  4. PART ONE
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. PART TWO
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. PART THREE
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-one
  28. Chapter Twenty-two
  29. Chapter Twenty-three
  30. Chapter Twenty-four
  31. Chapter Twenty-five
  32. Chapter Twenty-six
  33. Chapter Twenty-seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-one
  38. PART FOUR
  39. Chapter Thirty-two
  40. Chapter Thirty-three
  41. Chapter Thirty-four
  42. Chapter Thirty-five
  43. Chapter Thirty-six
  44. Chapter Thirty-seven
  45. Chapter Thirty-eight
  46. Chapter Thirty-nine
  47. Chapter Forty
  48. Chapter Forty-one
  49. Chapter Forty-two
  50. Chapter Forty-three
  51. Epilogue
  52. ALSO BY ROBERT LUDLUM
  53. Critical Praise for Robert Ludlum
  54. Copyright Page

“Listen, Pappy,” the guardsman said, rubbing the red and peeling bridge of his nose, “I will frog-march your ass into federal custody at gunpoint if I have to.” He stood directly in front of the other man. “You got a complaint, write your congressman.” He puffed out his chest, placed a hand near his holstered side arm.

“Why, look at you, you’re just breath and britches.” Janson limply made a swatting gesture with a hand, indicating dismissal and resignation. “Ah, you park rangers wouldn’t know a bufflehead from a widgeon.”

“Park ranger?” the guardsman sneered, shaking his head. “You think we’re park rangers?”

Suddenly, Janson sprang at him, clamping his right hand around his mouth, his left around the back of his neck. They fell together, the sound of the impact muffled by the sand, a quiet crunch lost amid the cawing of gulls and the rustling of the salt-meadow cordgrass. Even before they hit the ground, though, Janson had snaked his hand around and grabbed the man’s holstered M9 pistol.

“Nobody likes a smart-ass,” he said quietly, dropping the accent, jabbing the M9 Beretta into his trachea. The young man’s eyes widened in terror. “You got new orders, and you’d better obey them: a sound out of you and you’re dead, greenhorn.”

With swift movements, Janson undid the guardsman’s weapons belt and used it to bind his wrists to his ankles. Next, he ripped narrow strips of cloth from his camouflage tunic and stuffed them in the man’s mouth, finally securing the gag with the guardsman’s own bootlaces. After pocketing the man’s M9 and his Motorola “handy-talky,” he lifted him like a heavy rucksack and left him hidden amid a thick growth of cordgrass.

Janson pressed on, and when the beach disappeared, he walked farther up the grass. There would be at least another guard on patrol duty—the undersecretary’s weekend house had clearly been designated a federal facility—but there was a good chance that the Motorola Talkabout T6220 would let him know if any irregularities had been detected.

A fast five-minute walk and Janson found himself on the south side of a sparsely grassed dune, the cottage just out of view. His pace lessened as, with each step, his boots sank into the loose, silty sand, but his destination was not much farther.