He did not know it at the time, but his arrival had been witnessed by someone else hidden among the kukui trees just a short distance away.

David focused his attention on the armed guards patrolling the rooftops and balconies of the sprawling tropical mansion. Several walked a patrol just inside the stone walls surrounding the estate as well. They carried odd, spindly weaponry that he could not identify, and were dressed in standard bullet-proof vests, over black suits and ties, males and female both. Also, the people on the security detail all seemed to be wearing sunglasses – at night. Probably infrared devices. Getting in would not be easy. Getting out would be harder still.

David saw the silhouette of someone appear in a window on the second floor, overlooking the ocean. He quickly brought the imager to his eyes, but someone else had come up next to the figure with a weapon and was gesturing the first figure away from the window. He thought he might have made out a bun atop the head of the figure. Gotta be her, he thought.

At first, and only for a moment, David had not taken Kane seriously when he told him that President Eldridge had disappeared and was presumed kidnapped while on one of her many solitary retreats. The look on Kane’s face dispelled his skepticism.

Ever since the downsizing of the United States the previous century – an unforeseen consequence of the Great Chaos of 2057 – the resources of the U.S. Government had been seriously downsized as well. Though the federal government often used World Securities spysat network, David was still the first on the scene, though this was not a big surprise. Long ago, after the reputation of the company had been established, Kane approached the head of the World Council with an offer to watchdog the council members. Kane waited patiently to submit his proposal until the Executive Director, a rotating position, had cycled around to a member who was known to be prone to paranoia more than most. He knew that, more so than any other council member, his suggestion would fly with him. He did not even ask how Kane planned to be a secret bodyguard to each member of the council, thinking the plan would be more effective that way.

Within a few months, Kane had managed to land people in key administrative positions in every government on the World Council. Thus, it was easy to keep each head of state marked by a chemical tracking powder. The powder interacted with the body’s blood, causing it to become a living antenna. This allowed the WorldSec satnet to pinpoint each subject within a few meters, no matter where they might be on the surface of the planet. And no one but a tiny, dedicated tracker team within World Securities knew this.

Eldridge’s whereabouts had been determined to be on a spacious, remote shorefront home on Hawaii’s big island. The estate was owned by a wealthy industrialist named Jasmine Kirsch who was rumored to do business with anyone with the cash to pay, though she had never actually been caught doing anything on the wrong side of the law.

The cocktail party appeared to be breaking up, probably because of the lateness of the hour, with couples and small groups wandering off to outlying cabanas. David decided to make his move, feeling the movement of the various guests would add to the confusion. He quickly settled on a course of action. Noticing a small ornamental fountain, he ran back into the forest several meters and circled around until he was at a point behind the wall that was as close as he could get to the fountain from the outside. He silently scaled the wall and hopped down lightly, in its shadow. His WorldSec’s standard issue night maneuvers outfit, a black “skulksuit,” had detected some sort of passive security system, but automatically re-wove the system’s detection field around him as he passed through it.

He had noted earlier that the perimeter guards passed the fountain on their patrol every fifteen minutes – pretty heavy security for a cocktail party.

He hunched down behind some bushes near the fountain, watching as the guards passed by. Too big, he observed of the first. She’s not much like a guy, he judged of the second. The third one on approach seemed just about right.

David knew he would be seen instantly by way of his target’s night-vision specs, so he would have to work fast. He shook the bushes around him for just a moment, enough to give pause to the approaching man and engage his curiosity. As the guard warily advanced, he held up his weapon, sighting down the barrel and using it to move branches aside at the same time. David reached up and grabbed the barrel with one hand and pulled hard. The weapon discharged over his shoulder into the ground, though with a curious lack of heat and sound. As the man fell forward David grabbed the thick edge of the armored vest over his chest. He yanked him down towards him, a painful tactic for both parties, pulling him into his forearm and crushing his larynx, then smashing the man’s nose with the side of his fist and throwing him down at his feet behind the line of bushes. He was an unrecognizable mess, but not permanently damaged. He was also out cold.

David undid the armored vest’s catches, rolled the man over on his stomach and pulled the vest off. Undoing the network connections and pulling off the black top of his skulksuit, he hoped the high-necked white singlet beneath would pass for the white button-down shirt that was apparently a part of the security force’s uniform. He slipped on the man’s tie, jacket, and vest, then rolled the downed security man over again onto his back and plucked the night vision device from his face.

David gathered up the man’s communicator and placed the specs on his forehead, adjusting his new disguise. He picked up the spindly weapon and frowned at it. He hefted it, then tossed it up to chin level a few times, gauging its weight. He realized what it was.

“This is…this is a paint pellet gun,” he whispered aloud in surprise. What the hell is going on here? he thought.

Casting about, he found a large flat stone. He moved the shades down over his eyes and struck a glancing blow hard against his forehead, his eyes watering at the sting of pain.

“The things I do to keep the world safe,” he muttered, smiling grimly as he felt a trickle of blood down the side of his face. He pressed his hand against the injury and smeared the blood around a bit. Satisfied with the “simulated” wound, he pulled the man deeper into the bushes, plucking up some smaller shrubs from the ground and effectively hiding him. Then he threw himself with a great splash into the fountain, shouting at the top of his lungs, “Hey! Stop!”

Hauling himself out again, he squeezed off two rounds from his weapon into the air, then reacted at the foolishness of the effort, as the weapon made barely a sound. He shouted again and dove into the bushes, muddying his face and clothes with the loose dirt from the uprooted shrubs. He was surprised by the weapon’s kick – a high-powered paint pellet gun?

The commotion had the desired effect – a trio of security people were coming his way, running hard. Several of them trained their weapons and lights on him as he staggered out of the bushes, gasping for breath, dripping and choking, holding his throat. He looked up, reacting in surprise as he noticed the weapons pointing at him for the first time and shouting croakingly, “Hey! It’s me! It’s me! They ran that w–” and let his voice trail off in a fit of coughing. Two ran off in the indicated direction, but the third appeared to need some further convincing. David staggered over to him, head hanging down, holding out one hand covered in blood, and clapped it on the skeptical guard’s shoulder, as if for support. He flipped his head up to face the man, spraying him with water and blood from his dripping hair.

“Help me,” he croaked pitifully. The guard shrugged him off in revulsion, backing away and wiping his face with his sleeve.

“You know where the infirmary is!” he shouted over his shoulder as he ran after the others.

Another pair of eyes were privy to this performance. The hidden witness in the kukui trees lowered the night imager and stared in grudging astonishment. Has to be him, thought the one in the woods with a disbelieving shake of the head. Has to be the legendary Mr. North. He’s impulsive, reckless…and successful. I’m methodical, determined, and almost but not nearly so. So, why is he a legend, and I’m just a groupie?

Trying to remain in character, David glanced around and saw that the only people in sight were a pair of partygoers rousted from the bushes by the commotion. They looked at him drunkenly, lipstick smeared over both their mouths. “Get inside,” he said roughly, and the couple staggered off, suddenly driven sober by the sight of the muddied, bloodied man.

Well, they bought it, he thought optimistically. He tried hard not to close the distance between him and the house at a run, but made it into the light from the paper lanterns soon enough. A woman came out of the house, her pellet gun drawn but pointed upward, resting against her shoulder, taking in David’s ragged appearance.

“Report,” she demanded.

He nodded weakly, his face screwed up and distorted with apparent pain, mouthing the words, ‘Got hit in the throat.’ He hoped the quickly drying mud that masked his features would not flake off and reveal him.

“What happened?”

Great. She wants to chat. ‘Ambush.’

“How many of them?”

‘Two. Maybe three.’ David held up fingers, diverting her attention away from his face. He choked and gasped. He shook his head helplessly and shrugged. He pressed his hand to his forehead and stared at his palm, to see how badly he was bleeding. He was convincing, but he wasn’t certain of that until she said, “Go get yourself fixed up and head for the conference room. Wait for me there.” She nodded to the left around the corner of the house. He stood there tiredly, dripping water on the flagstones of the patio. He paused, then nodded and shuffled off hesitantly.

He was going in the direction she had nodded. He was hoping that when she nodded, she was referring to the infirmary and not the conference room. When he did not get shot in the back before he turned the corner – not that a paint pellet gun could do much harm – he breathed a sigh of relief. Behind him he could hear the woman on her comm unit. She was receiving a jumble of reports. He heard her curse once, loudly and with great frustration, then run off in the direction of the impromptu search party. Dogs barked loudly in the distance. Sounded like Dobermans.

He did not have the time nor the inclination to find a stairway. A trellis got him to the balcony that ran around the second level of the house. He sogged his way along the wall until he had reached the window in which he’d seen the figure earlier. Glancing in, he took a snapshot in his head, then sat, his back flat against the wall. His eyes closed, he studied the mental image: a spacious bedroom decorated in a tropical motif – dark wood, mosquito netting on the canopy bedframe, potted palms scattered tastefully about. Nice cage.

He focused on the woman in a business suit sitting in an armchair before a cold fireplace, her arms folded and her legs crossed, one foot wagging furiously. She looked nothing short of pissed.

You never piss off the head of a country, even one as small as the States, he thought. He tried the window – locked, naturally. She saw him and froze halfway to getting to her feet. He gave her the pre-arranged hand gesture that identified him as World Securities and she held up her hand a moment to freeze him, thinking furiously. Then she held out her palm, fingers splayed, gestured down the balcony to his right, then emphasized the five count once more. He nodded and trotted silently a short distance down the balcony – she needed five minutes to prepare.

He hated the brightly colored paper lanterns hanging along the edge of the overhang, but there was nothing to do about it within potential sight of the other guards without breaking character. He came across a set of French doors that opened onto the balcony. Just as he got there, he heard a loud knock on the door within that opened to the main corridor, a door that could only be the suite where she was being held. The guard standing there turned and opened it, peeking in. Abruptly his knees buckled.

The guard wasn’t the only one caught by surprise. Realizing with a sudden, hissing intake of breath what would happen next, David threw open the French doors and ran in, catching the man before he hit the floor with a telltale thud.

“Hey!” said a voice from down the hall. A second guard who had just rounded the corner with a silver tray laden with food, dropped the tray with a loud clatter – David winced and rolled his eyes – and instinctively touched his earpiece, to make sure his report of an intruder would be heard clearly and not misunderstood. Before he spoke a word, however, he pitched back and lay still, hitting the floor with a very telltale thud that David had hoped to avoid.

David was aware of the tiny sound of the dart as it had whizzed past his ear. He whipped around towards the French doors he had come through a moment before, dropping the man he held, creating yet another noisy thud, as he brought his weapon to bear on the figure framed in the doorway.

The intruder stood in camo fatigues, weapon pointing to the floor. Immediately the person flashed him a hand gesture similar to the one he had just given Eldridge.

“Who are you?” he stage-whispered.

“Your back-up,” came a decidedly feminine voice. Through the camo makeup and suit, and at this distance, he never would have thought it was a woman.

“I got through to my RT?” he asked, glancing at the World Securities-issue WS-02 “Mission Accomplished” multifunction weapon she held, off to one side.

She hesitated. “Something like that.”

“But I didn’t ask him for back-up.” His eyes narrowed, just a bit.

“What are you doing?” the President angrily demanded of them. “Get the hell in here, now!”

Contritely, they quickly dragged both men into the room and closed the door.

“Are you alright, Madame President?” David asked quietly.

“My question to you, sir, is, are you?” she retorted in that famous, clipped voice of hers, replacing her shoe on her foot, the heel of which had made a wonderful impromptu weapon upon which to use on the skull of her guard. Her suit was disheveled, her signature bun coming loose.

She was shorter and younger looking in real life than she appeared on the vidnet broadcasts.

“What? Oh, the mud and the blood? Just a disguise. Sort of. Name‘s North. And this is…” He laid an expectant eye upon his newfound companion as he gestured towards her gallantly.

 “West,” filled in the other with a cautious smile, not taking her eyes off of David. “My name is West.”

David let his arms fall, tilted his head at her and pulled back the corners of his mouth in disbelief.

“North and West?” said Eldridge, echoing David’s thought. “Sounds like the stuff of bad spy novels to me. But we need to get out of here, they won’t stay confused out there for long.” David shucked the vest, tie and jacket and pulled his skulksuit top back on. Eldridge grabbed the guard’s communicator and weapon, an old-fashioned M1911 – something she was comfortable with – and together they ran into the corridor. David and the mysterious West turned back to the balcony, but Eldridge grabbed David’s arm and gestured in the opposite direction with her head. They followed, hoping she knew what she was doing. She may have gotten herself elected in part through her combat experience in the military, but that experience might not be applicable in this little skirmish.

They rushed down a broad, curved ornately carved stairway. David frowned at the front door, hoping it was not her plan to leave that way. She saw what he was looking at, but tersely shook her head and indicated they were to follow her. They ran down a side corridor, passed a set of partially closed pocket doors, carved in the same elegant style of the staircase. From the quick view within as they dashed by, it appeared to be a large study or library. Inside a woman’s voice was heard shouting.

“Well, find them, stop them, damn it!” There was the sound of someone storming toward the door of the room. The crazed clicking of high heels across the wooden parquet floor grew louder. She was shouting, “Sorenson, come in, is Katherine safe? Sorenson!”

“Cat’s out of the bag, ma’am,” David whispered as they picked up their pace to get out of sight around the corner. Then they were through the dark kitchen and heading out the back door. A long garage with a series of rolldoors lay ahead of them. Eldridge checked around the corner, gun at the ready, then gestured him forward.

He smiled to himself and exchanged glances with his new partner. “It’s darn cool rescuing someone with combat experience,” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth. She may have returned his smile as they ran to the garage – it was hard to tell through the camouflage makeup.

They were surprised and disappointed to find nothing but electric carts in the garage. They were hoping for a ground car of some kind with at least a little more power than these little golf carts. Shrugging, Eldridge gestured to the nearest one and climbed in behind the wheel.

“Play the hand you’re dealt,” she said.

West looked North-ward, but he shook his head.

“Go first. I’ll cover you.” He began to tell them the location of the microchopper in which he had arrived, hidden in the forest a kilometer away, but West cut him off.

“I know where it is. Just don’t stay behind too long.” She climbed into a second cart.

“Wait a second, how do you know where the chopper is?” David asked.

She smiled sweetly, switching her weapon over from darts to solid projectiles and checking the safety. “Because I’m your back-up, remember?” She gripped his wrist for a moment.

Then she looked at him in a way he had never seen anyone look at him before. It was just the most subtle of expressions, a moment and it was gone. But abruptly he found himself thinking, she is my back-up. What the heck was I thinking? Then he wondered how he knew that, or for that matter, why he thought that at this particular moment.

Eldridge had found the control on the cart’s little dashboard that operated the rolldoors and stamped the pedal that ejected the power supply from the port in the side of the cart. She looked at the others expectantly. They nodded their readiness, and she punched the door opener. The door rose almost soundlessly. A moment later West was whirring away across the grounds. Eldridge took off after her, staying to the left and very close behind. David gave them a moment’s head start, standing in the doorway they had come through to keep an eye on the back door of the house.

From his vantage point he could keep the two women in sight as well. When he was fairly certain they were far enough away to be safe, he hopped into a cart and sped away after them.

He wasn’t halfway between the garage and safety when a searing pain in his shoulder threw him forward, and he lost control of the cart. There was the smell of something synthetic burning, and a hissing sound from somewhere very close behind him. Maybe his back? Slamming the canopy frame with the side of his head that was not yet bleeding, he was seeing stars as the cart flipped over. He was thrown clear but dragged himself to his feet, instinctively reaching for the wound on his back as he tried to make a run for it. Then, two more impacts shoved him to the ground. Spots swam in front of his eyes, and he realized he had been shot, not only in the neck, but in the back of the head as well. Falling down on all fours, he reached behind his head. His hand came away covered in blood – but as he rubbed his fingers together, he realized that while the stain was red, it was not blood. Then why did it burn so much?

“What the hell…” he muttered. Though woozy and unable to process this information, his fingers now beginning to burn as well, his mind gelled quickly as he heard a barking sound. He knew he was in trouble when he saw the Dobermans bearing down upon him. A rushing sound, feet on grass, came from the direction of the house, and he tried to raise himself up. The dogs were frozen within mauling distance of his feet, glaring and snarling, held in place by incredible training. A woman was rushing up to them, wearing a suit and tie in a pastel shade, one of the flimsy paint pellet guns held at the ready across her chest. Even in the dark he could tell by the cut of the woman’s clothing that she was not just another member of the security force. She was older than the others David had so far observed, perhaps in her late fifties. Yet there was something rather striking in her appearance – she was very lanky, and she had a commanding presence.

Especially when she was holding a high-powered paint pellet gun.

“You released her, didn’t you?” the woman said angrily in a deep voice, the same voice he had heard coming from the study in the house.

David slumped back tiredly on the ground. In a moment of clarity, he had a bad feeling that he had finally played out his luck.

When he did not answer, the woman brought the butt of the weapon down hard on David’s kneecap, shattering it. He cried out, and the dogs snarled and yipped, on the verge of overriding their training, edging perceptibly closer. He was not sure what he worried about more at that moment, the killer guard dogs, or the lunatic with the pellet gun. The only thing he wanted now was to buy more time for the two women on the run.

 “I’ll bet you aren’t even American,” spat the woman standing over him. “Don’t even speak the language, do you? Where are you from? Incan Republic? Aztecs? That’s probably why you aren’t answering me. All you feathers-and-blankets people tend to stick together. Well, in the name of the United States of America and racial purity – and self-defense, my right as an American according to the Constitution – I’m sending you to that great big powwow in the sky.” As she brought her weapon to bear upon the man at her feet, David threw up his arm in a feeble attempt at protection.

“Wait!” he shouted as he frantically searched the area around him for his fallen gun. “I’m American!” Then he saw his lost weapon. It was within reach and untouchable between the front legs of one of the snarling dogs.

“Bullshit!” shouted the lunatic over him, but she was drowned out by another voice, a familiar and commanding voice, low and serious.

“Jazz. Don’t. Move.”

David fell back on the grass, shaking his head in disbelief. Eldridge stood silently in the dark, the appropriated Colt aimed squarely between Jasmine Kirsch’s eyes.

“When you get rescued, you aren’t supposed to come back,” David shouted angrily.

“Rescued?” said Kirsch in disbelief. “Is that what you thought you were doing, rescuing my guest?” She barked out a laugh and made a throwaway gesture in his direction. “Ah, you’re done for anyway.” She turned and faced the President, her arms held out invitingly, head tilted with great love to one side. “Katy, Katy, Katy,” she said chidingly. “We’ve been doing business together for so long now. I thought you’d be more receptive to my proposal.”

“Buying your chemical weaponry and using them in a genocidal ‘cleansing’ of our country is not something I feel I can be receptive to,” she said, outraged, crossing the grass to David. She haunched down and checked his pulse, never taking her eye or gun from the other.

Thready, she thought. Have to get him out of here. Where the hell is West?

Kirsch’s face turned regretful. “We would have made a great team, you and I…if you catch my drift,” she added coquettishly, twirling an errant strand of hair enticingly around one finger. When Eldridge showed no reaction whatsoever to this blatant attempt at flirting and seduction, her demeanor suddenly changed.

“Perhaps your running mate will be more agreeable,” she said in bitter anger at the rejection. She brought her weapon up and that was enough for the President. Eldridge squeezed the trigger, and in the awkward position she was in, the kick of the weapon landed her with a great lack of dignity on her backside. Kirsch’s head lurched back, the pellet gun falling uselessly to the dewy grass. She was dead before she hit her well-tended lawn. The dogs began to whimper and gathered around her, licking her face and pawing the grass nervously.

The gunfire had brought the security people running, and they had formed an uncertain semicircle around the event. President Eldridge was on her knees, her weapon passing from one to another.

“You all just lost the one who signs your paychecks,” she said firmly. “You no longer have employment here. As commander-in-chief of the government, I order someone to help me get this man some medical attention.”

They stood around her, looking at each other with great indecision. With the night vision glasses still on their faces, Eldridge was unable to tell which way this standoff was going to go. Then the security chief David had fooled earlier, shoved her way through the small group. She glared hatred at David, upon recognizing him, then lowered her gaze like a weapon upon Eldridge.

“Take her, and kill him now,” she said in a low voice. A few of the others began to step quickly forward, raising their weapons.

There was a low rushing sound, like the wind suddenly picking up, and then the ground behind Eldridge lit up with a blinding light. The trio of flares impacted in the grass dangerously close, bracketing the group, bathing the area in intense light. Immediately almost everyone in the private security detail cried out and dropped their weapons. They were clawing off their night vision goggles, the light of the flare, amplified by the units, blinding them completely.

But the female team leader was not wearing hers. She quickly pulled her own, more conventional sidearm, throwing the paint gun down, and drew a bead on the tiny chopper as it banked, a perfect target, dead in her sights. Before she squeezed the trigger she felt a searing pain in her thigh, like a white-hot poker. Collapsing on one knee she bent to grab her leg, realizing with a shock that Eldridge had shot her.

“I am ordering you to stand down,” Eldridge demanded of the woman.

“I didn’t vote for you,” she said with a mean smile, whipping her weapon around toward Eldridge, then abruptly pitched over. A small dart had appeared in her neck. West once again passed quickly over, frighteningly low, the chopper still in whisper mode. In the bubble canopy, Eldridge could see the pilot holding her gun at ease, looking back to make sure her target had been hit. Satisfied, she tossed the weapon to the seat beside her and banked sharply, landing with a hard bounce a short distance away.

“Something’s wrong with your partner. We need to get him out of here,” Eldridge said as West rushed up, her weapon held at the ready. The other men and women still writhed about on the ground. A few of them had risen unsteadily to their feet, others crawled about looking for weapons in the grass. But no one was shooting yet. The dogs yipped and yelped in increasing agitation.

The women helped David to his feet. They got him into the small cargo area of the tiny aircraft, then exchanged glances.

“Can you fly this?” West asked the President.

“I can give it the old academy try,” she replied.

“No!” David protested weakly. “We came to get you out of here. You! We’re not leaving…” His eyes rolled back in his head and his voice trailed away as he slumped down in the tiny padded bay.

Then they heard a loud, menacing mechanical clatch behind them.

One of the security people had found their boss’ dropped M1911 and cocked it manually.

Though he still couldn’t see, he ranged it back and forth, patiently waiting for the pocket aircraft to take off so he would have a definite target.

Then the spotlights hit them all and the amplified voice came rolling across the grounds of the estate. Large combat helicopters landed smoothly on the grounds in a triangular configuration that encompassed the scene, and U.S. military forces dressed in black jumped out of the aircraft.

Eldridge took charge of the assault team immediately, and moments later David was being hustled into one of the big helicopters.

Conscious again, David lay strapped down and plugged into a mediplank aboard one of the big helicopters. Eldridge stood on the ground beside the aircraft and looked at him in concern. A thin corpsman was checking David over with a handheld medipad.

“Hey, what was that all about back there?” David asked weakly.

She sighed sadly. “The American government has been doing business with Kirsch’s family for years, going back several generations to a time even before the Chaos. She’s always been a reliable businessperson, if perhaps a bit on the super-patriotic side, and as a weapons manufacturer her products were always the best.” She looked as if she was sorry she had never been able to get through to the dead arms dealer.

“Personally, I have known her since college. She was my roommate, in fact.” Eldridge looked a bit embarrassed by the implication the confession held, coupled with the flirtatious manner in which Kirsch had performed, but continued quickly. “Even back then she was always jabbering about mounting an all-out war with the Native Americans in order to ‘retake the West’, as she put it. Recently she had developed some new chemical weapons and thought she could test them out during this battle she wanted to wage. Ever since we’ve been kids, she’s been telling me her grandfather’s stories, passed down by his grandfather and his grandfather before that. Stories of how things used to be, before the Chaos, when the U.S. still had all fifty states. Frankly, I don’t know why she was such a patriot.”

“Why’s that?” David asked.

Eldridge shrugged and laughed a small, sad laugh. “She was Canadian.” David laughed, but began to cough abruptly.

“Didn’t Canada take some of the States during the aftermath of the Chaos?” asked the medic.

“I see they’re teaching the truth in world history nowadays,” Eldridge replied sardonically.

“Say,” David said with forced offhandedness, “what do you suppose Kirsch meant by ‘I’m done for anyway’?”

Eldridge looked at the medic for an answer. He shrugged. “Beats me. He checks out fine on my scanners. Patella’s smashed, elevated temp, but other than that–”

“Well, these wounds are burning like hell,” David growled.

“What? Where?” asked the medic in some surprise.

David glared at him and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. The medic leaned forward and gently lifted David up, taking in the three impacts. “You said they hit you with paint pellet guns? That might sting for a while, but I don’t know any reason why it would burn – hey, what the hell is this?”

“I dislike your bedside manner,” David said warningly.

Eldridge leaned forward. When the medic gingerly wiped away the paint with an antiseptic cloth they could see a dark area about the size of a ping pong ball on the back of David’s neck, red, blistered and already looking seriously infected. From a relatively smooth central point about the size of his thumb, there was a field of tiny black craters that dug deeply into the flesh. The wound on the back of his head was similar, and the shoulder wound showed evidence of something more important.

“The paint’s eaten through the fabric back here,” said the medic. “Must have been laced with an acid of some kind.” He reached around and began rummaging through his medikit.

Eldridge and North exchanged glances. Her horror showed through her political poker face.

“Her new weapon?” David asked, unable to hide his resignation.

She did not reply, which was answer enough.

“Never seen anything like this before,” muttered the medic. He opened a comm channel to the medical facilities and put through some urgent requests, dropping a few references to the President in order to lubricate the process.

Eldridge stepped quickly to the front of the aircraft, banging on the canopy to get the pilot’s attention. She gave him a thumb’s up and the field combat gesture for “medic.” The veteran pilot recognized the old military signals immediately, nodding vigorously as he turned to his controls and performed a visual check of his surroundings. The copter picked itself up off the ground, whupping into the sky, banking for the nearest military base.

Eldridge took in the activity of the strike force. The G-men had processed Kirsch’s body, rounded up the incapacitated security detail and crated up the dogs. Others were doing a full sweep of the house and grounds. Several of them were interviewing the party attendees. It was then she noticed David’s partner was missing, as was the microchopper. She frowned, but sought out the commander of the strike force to get an update on the situation. She gave the matter of David’s partner no more thought.