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The blades were the sharpest things Knight had ever seen. Or felt. One of them slashed across his face, carving a line of blood across his cheek.

What had previously been all dapper-Swiss-banker was now a perfectly-balanced bladesman exhibiting the exquisite knife skills only associated with the—

'Swiss Guards, hey, Delacroix?' Knight said as he moved. 'You never told me that. Nice. Very nice.'

'In my trade,' Delacroix sneered, 'a man must know how to handle himself.'

Schofield and Wexley traded blows by the doorway.

Wexley was bigger and stronger than Schofield, skilful, too.

Schofield, however, was quicker, his now-famous reflexes allowing him to evade Wexley's more lethal blows.

But after the exertions of the previous twenty-four hours and the crash of the X-15 and the trip as a captive to France, his energy levels were low.

As such, he over-extended with one punch.

Wexley nailed him for the error—a withering blow to the nose that would have killed any other man—and Schofield staggered, but as he fell, he managed to unleash a ruthless blow of his own to Wexley's Adam's apple.

Both men fell, dropping to the floor together—Wexley went sprawling across the open doorway, gasping, while Schofield slumped against the doorframe beside him.

Wexley groaned, and rising to his knees, drew a Warlock hunting knife from his boot.

'Too late, asshole,' Schofield said.

The strange thing was, he had no weapon in his hands. He had something better. He had Killian's remote.

'This is for McCabe and Farrell,' he said, hitting a button on the remote.

Immediately, the steel door above Wexley came thundering down out of its recess, slamming into Wexley's head like a pile-driver, driving it down into the stone floor where—sprack!—it cracked Wexley's head in an instant, flattening it.

With Wexley dead, Schofield turned to find the man he really wanted.

He saw him standing behind the desk.

Jonathan Killian.

Knight was still fighting Delacroix when he saw Schofield approach Killian over by the desk.

It wasn't that Knight was worried about Killian. Far from it. He was worried about what Schofield was going to do.

But he couldn't get away from Delacroix . . .

Schofield stopped in front of Killian.

The contrast couldn't have been more marked. Schofield was covered in dirt and grime, bloodied and beaten and worn. Apart from his bullet-nicked ear and wounded hand Killian was relatively neat and tidy, his clothes perfectly pressed.

The shattered floor-to-ceiling panoramic window overlooking the Atlantic yawned beside them.

The thunderstorm outside raged. Lightning forks tore the sky. Rain lanced in through the broken window.

Schofield gazed at Killian without emotion.

When he didn't speak, Killian just smirked.

'So, Captain Schofield. What are your intentions now? To kill me? I am a defenceless civilian. I have no military skills. I am unarmed.' Killian's eyes narrowed. 'But then, I don't think you could kill me. Because if you killed me now in rank cold blood, it would be my final victory, and perhaps my greatest achievement. For it would only prove one thing: that I broke you. I turned the last good man in the world into a cold-hearted murderer. And all I did was kill your.girl.'

Schofield's eyes never wavered.

His whole appearance was unnaturally still.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low, dangerous.

'You once told me that Westerners don't understand suicide bombers,' he said slowly. 'Because suicide bombers don't fight fair. That the battle is meaningless to a suicide bomber, because he wants to win a far more important war: a psychological war in which the man who dies in a state of terror or fear—the man who dies against his will—loses.' Schofield paused. 'While the man who dies when he is emotionally ready, wins.'

Killian frowned.

Schofield never flinched, not even when a totally fatalistic, nihilistic smile washed across his face.

Then he grabbed Killian roughly by the throat and brought the billionaire right up close to his face and growled, 'You're not emotionally ready to die, Killian. But I am. Which means I win.'

'Jesus Christ, no . . .' Killian stammered, realising what was about to happen. 'No!!!'

And with those words, hauling the screaming Jonathan Killian with him, Shane Schofield stepped out through the shattered panoramic window beside them, out into the storm, and the two of them—hero and villain—fell together through 400 feet of sky down to the jagged rocks below.

At the very same moment that Schofield pulled Killian right up close to his face, Aloysius Knight had got the jump on Delacroix.

A quick sidestep to the left had caused Delacroix to stab one of his knives deep into the wood-panelled wall of the office—and allowed Knight to whip his blowtorch out from his utility vest and jam it into Delacroix's mouth and pull the trigger.

The blue flame from the blowtorch blasted out the back of Delacroix's head, spiking right through his skull, sending burnt brains flying across the room. The Swiss banker slumped instantly, dead, a char-rimmed hole driven right through his head.

Knight emerged from behind the fallen Delacroix just in time to see Shane Schofield step out into the storm, taking the screaming Killian with him.

Schofield fell through the rain with Jonathan Killian at his side.

The rocky mount rushed past them, while directly below them, Schofield saw the rocks, assaulted by the waves of the Atlantic, that would end his life.

And as he fell, a strange peace came over him. This was the end, and he was ready for it.

Then suddenly, from out of nowhere, something struck him hard in the back and he jolted sickeningly and without warning . . .

. . . stopped falling.

Jonathan Killian shrank away from him—falling, falling, falling—disappearing with the rain, before slamming into the rocks at the base of the mount where he bent at an obscene angle and

then vanished in a foul explosion of his own blood. He screamed all the way down.

And yet Schofield did not fall.

He just hung from the panoramic window at the end of a Maghook rope—from the Maghook that had just been fired by Aloysius Knight, the Maghook he had taken from Mother before— a desperate last-gasp shot that he had fired as he leaned out the window a second after Schofield had jumped—the bulbous magnetic head of the Maghook having attached itself to the metal plate inside the back section of Schofield's borrowed flak vest.

Schofield allowed himself to be reeled back up to the office like a fish on a line. When he got there, Knight hauled him back inside.

'I'm sorry, buddy,' Knight said. 'But I just couldn't let you go like that. That said, I still think you made your point to Killian.'

Ten minutes later, as the sun appeared on the horizon, a lone Aston Martin sped away from the Forteresse de Valois with Aloysius Knight at the wheel and Shane Schofield, Mother and Rufus inside it. The car took the side-road leading up to the castle's airfield. There, after a very one-sided gunbattle, its occupants stole an Axon helicopter and flew off toward the rising sun.

Over the next few months, a strange variety of incidents took place around the world.                                    \

Just a week later, in Milan, Italy, it was claimed that there had been a break-in at the Aerostadia Italia Airshow, and that an aircraft had been stolen from one of the airshow's outlying hangars.

After the disappointing non-appearance of the fabled US X-15 rocket planes already, this was not the kind of publicity that the air-show needed.

Witnesses claimed that the aircraft taken was a sleek, black fighter which—so they said—took off vertically. While this description matched the description of the experimental Russian Sukhoi S-37, airshow and Italian Air Force officials were quick to point out that no such plane had been slated to appear at the show.