“Ten seconds,” the wounded man gasped.

It was then that another voice intruded. “Actually, not a thousand, but there are several very good ones.” A sweaty, dusty but well-dressed man broke from the brush. The accent was British. It was the man swimming through the crowd not long before. “Reasons for not pushing that button, I mean.”

Chernayev stepped back, the BlueWatch shooters swinging their guns onto the Brit.

“Ah, ah, don’t be too hasty there,” the man said. He looked toward Chernayev. “Ian Barrett-Bone,” he said, as if introducing himself at a cocktail party.

“Who the hell are you?” the Russian asked.

The man ignored the question. “First of all, my team has been recording everything for the past half hour. Pictures of you are on hard drives in several very secure locations. You push that detonator, some of the best law enforcement agencies in the world will come after you. And they will find you. That’s if you get away, of course. Which you probably won’t. Since three of my snipers are sighting on you at this moment.”

The Russian looked around uneasily.

“You won’t spot them. They’re much better than . . . ” His voice trailed off as he contemptuously regarded a swarthy BlueWatch security man nearby. The Brit continued, “Oh, the second reason you don’t want to push the button and kill the president? It would be a bit of a waste of time. Owing as how he’s not really the president.”

“Chto?” The man gasped.

“Oh, please, Arkady. Think about it. American foreign policy can be counted on for some monumental blunders, but the administration is hardly foolish enough to send their chief executive into a known threat zone like this. The real president’s in Washington. Monitoring everything that’s going on here, by the way.”

“A look-alike?” Connie Carson whispered.

“Quite so. We weren’t exactly sure what would happen here but I knew it involved the Scorpion and some associate from the People’s Republic. We put this charade together to flush the main ops into the open.”

Archer was staring at the LZ. Dismayed, he raged, “Something’s wrong. The marines and the Secret Service . . . They’re not leaving. They’re targeting Sanam’s men.”

Middleton asked the logical question. “And who’s ‘we’?”

Barrett-Bone said, “MI5, Foreign Operations Division. We’re working with the CIA and U.S. and British military.” He spoke into his collar and immediately two dozen men in serious combat gear stepped out of bushes, guns trained on Chernayev and the nearby BlueWatch security people.

Middleton recognized the uniform and the winged dagger insignia of the famed British Special Air Service, an infantry unit like the U.S.’s Delta Force or Navy Seals. The gravity of their mission was heralded by the fact that two were armed with FN Minimi machine guns and the rest had their SA80 assault rifles mounted with “Uglies”—underslung grenade launchers.