Middleton turned about, gazing off toward the huge throng stretching well into the thousands pulsing into the natural amphitheater from which the President of the United States would christen the opening of the dam with unprecedented pomp and circumstance.

“Any luck so far?”‘

Chernayev shrugged again. “It is a very large crowd, comrade. But my men are good and know what to look for.”

“The BlueWatch people?”

“Da. And, believe me, Colonel, they’ve been trained for this kind of work.”

“What kind of work is that?”

“Up-close termination.”

“Like shooting a radioactive pellet into a defector’s leg?”

Chernayev grinned, winked. “Now, comrade, where did you ever get an idea like that?”

Their eyes moved to the sky simultaneously alert by the distant whooping sound of a helicopter. Middleton could feel the Russian tense even as his own spine snapped erect.

The president was arriving.

“I won’t be able to get you much closer than this.”

“That’s OK,” Tesla told the driver. “We’ll manage.”

The driver regarded the hobbled Charley in his rearview mirror and continued, “But there is a VIP section, much, much closer to the official ceremony. Perhaps you have some sort of press or political credentials . . . ”

“As a matter of fact I do,” Tesla lied. And passed him $50.

He beamed. “Then I will do my best to get you there.”

The driver swung right, drove down an isolated stretch of hastily flattened road toward a security fence manned by a trio of Indian special police. They signaled the cab to stop, one coming round to the driver’s side while the other two kept to their posts ahead of the car’s hood.

Tesla turned toward Charley, prepared to offer some reassuring words when a sudden flash of motion snapped her attention back to the front seat. The driver’s hands were suddenly off the wheel, both grasping silenced pistols. Before she could react, he had thrust them out the window and opened fire on the approaching guard and the two standing at the front of the car.

The angle of the shots should have been impossible. Unless it was practiced. No one was around to see their murders.

Tesla gasped. Her first instinct was to protect Charley. Weaponless, there was little more that she could do.

Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw another man slip from the bushes, where, apparently he’d been waiting. Dressed in local clothing, with a long beard, he walked quickly to the driver’s window. He spoke in Hindi to the driver, then turned to the women.

“You are please to come with me. Now.” He said something else but his words vanished as the president’s helicopter, flanked by a pair of gun ships, soared overhead.

Archer’s cell phone beeped to signal an incoming text and he raised it upward, shielding it from the sun, to read Umer’s message:

IN PLACE. ALL IS READY.