“Not at this time.”

He looked up and he noted Ruth standing in the doorway.

Why the hell hadn’t he closed the door? “Yes?”

“Shreve. It’s Operations.”

A flashing red LED light on Metzger’s phone console.

He hadn’t noticed it.

What now?

He held up an index finger to Spencer Boston and answered. “Metzger here.”

“Sir, we have Rashid.” The OD was younger even than Metzger and his voice revealed that.

Suddenly the Smoke vanished. And so did Nance Laurel, Lincoln Rhyme and virtually every other blot on his life. Rashid was the next man in the Special Task Order queue, after Moreno. Metzger had been after him for a very long time. “Where?”

“He’s in Mexico.”

“So that’s his plan. The prick got closer than we thought.”

“Slippery, sir. Yes. He’s in a temporary location, a safe house the Matamoros Cartel has in Reynosa. We have a short window. Should I forward details to the GCS and Texas Center?”

“Yes.”

The operations director asked, “Sir, are you aware that the STO has been modified in Washington?”

“In what regard?” he asked, troubled.

“The original order provided for minimizing collateral damage but it didn’t prohibit CD. This one does. Approval is rescinded if anyone else present is a casualty, even wounded.”

Rescinded…

Which means that if anybody is killed with Rashid, even al-Qaeda’s second-in-command about to push a nuclear launch button, I’ve acted outside the scope of my authority.

And I’m fucked.

It didn’t matter that a pure asshole died and a thousand innocent people were saved.

Maybe this was part of the “budgetary” meetings.

“Sir?”

“Understood.”

He disconnected and told Boston the news. “Rashid? I thought that son of a bitch was going to hide out in San Salvador till the attack. He paid off members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang—aka the MS-13s—for protection. Had some place in District Six, near Soyapango. If you want to get lost to the world, that’s the place to do it.”

Nobody knew Central America like Spencer Boston.

A flag arose on his computer. Metzger opened his encrypted emails and read the new STO there, the death warrant for al-Barani Rashid, suitably modified. He read it again and added his electronic signature and PIN number, approving the kill.

The man was, like Moreno, a U.S.-born expatriate, who’d been living in northern Africa and the Gulf states until a few months ago.

He’d been on a watch list for several years but only under informal surveillance, not in any of the active-risk books. He’d never done anything overt that could be proven. But he was as vehemently anti-American as Moreno. And he too had been seen in the company of groups that were actively engaged in terrorist actions.