Despite her natural composure in the face of danger, everything in her body went on high alert as the massive animal loomed out of the darkness in front of her. A single swipe from one of those huge front paws, and the six-inch claws embedded in them could slice her in half. And the canines on this monster had to be at least three inches long. She couldn’t see either of his weapons in the darkness, but she remembered them from this afternoon. And this was definitely the same bear. She recognized the huge silhouette along with the sounds.
She took several deep breaths when the bear finally stopped twenty feet away. As it gazed at her with what she knew were beady brown eyes, it swayed gently back and forth like a huge, shadowy cobra. This thing had completely overcome its fear, which she took as a compliment to her cooking. She could tell from its body language that it had no intention of backing off that food anytime soon. This was his territory for now, and anything or anyone who trespassed here was in mortal danger.
She knelt down and felt around the ground. She was searching for a rock the size of a baseball, one she could hurl easily. Her fingers closed around one that was slightly larger, the size of a softball, but that would do. The bear had stopped swaying. It was getting ready to charge.
Skylar rose back up again, took aim, and threw. The rock caught the grizzly in the side of the face, enraging it instantly, exactly as she’d intended. The animal pawed the ground three times, roared, and charged.
She turned, tossed one end of the rope over the thick branch above her, caught it as it fell back to earth, dashed at a forty-five-degree angle for the edge of the cliff — and leaped. As she hung on to both ends of the rope, she literally prayed for dear life.
She could almost feel the heat of the bear’s breath as the ground gave way beneath her and she swung out in an arc over the crashing ocean 130 feet below. As the rope began to swing her back toward the cliff, she was aware of the bear hurtling past and heard its desperate grunt. That naturally bad eyesight had failed him. In his rage, he hadn’t seen the cliff and was now plummeting toward the rocks below.
Skylar had no time to congratulate herself. The branch supporting the rope snapped under the pressure as she swung back toward the cliff, dropping her precariously just as she should have landed on the forest floor. She let go of the rope and grabbed desperately for the top of the cliff as she slammed into the face of it. For a few terrible seconds it seemed she would join the bear in his fatal plunge on the rocks below.
But as her hands began to slide, her fingers found a rock and her foot a toehold. She grasped the rock with her left hand, slipped the bowie knife out of its sheath with her right, and stabbed the earth. Now she had three points of pressure, and she was able to climb over the edge of the cliff for the second time in less than three minutes. Hopefully, there wasn’t another bear waiting for her. Except for coming together on the rivers for the salmon runs, mating, and mothering, they were solitary animals. So she felt that she was alone. But others would come looking for the food soon.
When she was standing on terra firma again, she checked herself for injuries. Other than a few scrapes and what was going to be a nasty bruise on one shin, she seemed fine. So she set off through the woods to retrieve her rifle before heading back to town.
As she passed the still-smoldering campfire, she scooped up the last rainbow and began to eat as she walked. She needed energy for the hike, and the munchies were setting in big-time. She was glad the bear had ignored it and focused on the venison. For some reason she was more in the mood for fish right now.
As she walked her adrenaline began to settle, and she began to consider what she was heading toward. What in God’s name did the president of the United States want with her?
CHAPTER 20
Liam Sterling walked along Constitution Avenue through the late-afternoon humidity of Washington, DC, all the while taking copious mental notes because he never wrote anything down. Written notes created evidence, and evidence was his sworn enemy.
Sterling wore a faded blue Minnesota Twins baseball cap, a dark-red faux beard, and a layer of false padding below his gray University of Iowa Hawkeyes T-shirt. He walked a little slowly and a little hunched over, careful to make his movement seem stiff. And as he moved east along Constitution toward the Capitol, he licked a double-scoop chocolate ice cream cone he’d just bought from a street vendor near the Lincoln Memorial, making certain to allow a few drops to fall on his shirt as he looked around and shook his head in apparent awe. He was trying hard, though not too hard, to look like an anonymous, middle-aged tourist from the Midwest who was visiting the nation’s capital for the first time.
That was the key to carrying off a disguise, Sterling knew. Not trying too hard to look like someone you weren’t. Trying too hard was a dead giveaway to the trained eye, and Sterling was never so arrogant to think that he might not finally be discovered one day. He hadn’t yet, as far as he knew, but there could always come a day.
He glanced south toward the Washington Monument. One more mission and he was out of this racket. He’d decided that last night on the long plane ride from Lima to Dulles.
It had been less than twenty-four hours since he’d finished his meeting with Daniel Gadanz at the jungle compound in Peru. But he already had people coming toward Washington from multiple locations around the globe. They were converging from faraway places in roundabout ways to minimize detection, because if any of America’s intel groups caught a sniff of the hell heading toward them, they’d put this city on lockdown immediately.
Some of the people Sterling had called to help him were most certainly on intel radar screens. If the authorities put the pieces together, they’d shut down the federal government right away, and civilians would be required to show identification on nearly every street corner. Active troops and National Guardsmen would be swarming everywhere searching for the assassins. It would be that intense. And there would go the mission.
Sterling already had his bloodhounds scouring the world for Bill Jensen, but no luck so far. The world was a big place, and Gadanz had been quite certain about Jensen being resourceful. But it was early yet. There was still time to acquire that target, which would mean another twenty-five million dollars.
One of Sterling’s trackers had located Jack and Troy in Connecticut. Sterling could have both of them killed within the hour if he wanted, but killing the brothers now would send all the other targets to ground, and he couldn’t have that. Everything had to be perfectly choreographed if he was going to maximize his reward and, perhaps just as important, he realized, maximize his self-satisfaction at carrying out the greatest attack ever on the United States of America. It would end up being far more momentous than 9/11 or the Holiday Mall Attacks. So he was going to wait on killing Jack and Troy Jensen, even if they were exposed right now.
He smiled a little as he hesitated and turned to the north to gaze at the White House. Marine One was landing on the back lawn. Life is good, he thought to himself, watching the large olive-green-and-white helicopter touch down and whip the tree branches and grass around it into a frenzy.
It surprised him that there was only one chopper. There should be at least two, he figured, three if they were going to be really careful. Those things would be so easy to bring down with a surface-to-air missile, which almost any idiot could obtain these days. If there were two birds in the sky, the president would have a slightly better chance at surviving an attack. The idiot using the SAMs might not hit both of them.
Then he spotted three other choppers hovering to the east.