James Rollins - Map of Bones

Painter opened the dossier before him. The team leader’s file fronted the record.

Dr. and Commander Grayson Pierce.

The agent’s photograph stared up at him from the upper right corner. It was the man’s mug shot from his year of incarceration at Leavenworth. Dark hair shaved to a stubble, blue eyes still angry. His Welsh heritage was evident in the sharp cheekbones, wide eyes, and strong jaw. But his ruddy complexion was all Texan, burnt by the sun over the dry hills of Brown County.

Painter didn’t bother glancing over the inch-thick file. He knew the details. Gray Pierce had joined the Army at eighteen, the Rangers at twenty-one, and served to distinction off and on the field. Then, at twenty-three, he was court-martialed for striking a superior officer. Painter knew the details and the back history of the two in Bosnia. And considering the events, Painter might have done the same. Still, rules were codified in granite among the armed forces. The decorated soldier spent one year in Leavenworth.

But Gray Pierce was too valuable to be cast aside forever.

His training and skill could not be wasted.

Sigma had recruited him three years ago, right out of prison.

Now Gray was a pawn between the Guild and Sigma.

One about to be crushed.

“I’ve got base security!” Logan said, relief ringing in his voice.

“Get them over—”

“Sir!” The technician leapt to his feet, still tethered to his console by the headset’s cord. He glanced to Painter. “Director Crowe, I’m picking up a trace audio feed.”

“What—?” Painter stepped closer to the technician. He raised a hand to hold off Logan.

The technician turned up the feed on the speakers.

A tinny voice reached them though the video feed remained fritzed.

One word formed.

“Goddamnmotherfuckingpieceofshit…”

GRAY KICKED out a heel, catching the woman in the midriff. He felt a satisfying thud of flesh, but heard nothing. His ears rang from the concussion of the slug against his Kevlar helmet. The shot had spider-webbed his faceshield. His left ear burned as the electronic bay shorted with a burst of static.

He ignored it all.

Rolling to his feet, he slipped the carbonized dagger from its wrist sheath and dove under a neighboring row of tables. Another shot, sounding like a loud cough, penetrated the ring of his ears. Wood splintered from the edge of the table.

He cleared the far side and kept a wary crouch while searching the room. His kick had caused the woman to drop her flashlight, which rolled on the floor, skittering shadows everywhere. He fingered his chest. The body blow of the assassin’s first shot still burned and ached.

But no blood.

The woman called to him from the shadows. “Liquid body armor.”

Gray dropped lower, attempting to pinpoint the woman’s location. The dive under the table had jarred his helmet’s internal heads-up display. Its holographic images flickered incoherently across the inside of his faceshield, interfering with his sightlines, but he dared not abandon the helmet. It offered the best protection against the weapon still in the woman’s hand.

That and his body suit.

The assassin was right. Liquid body armor. Developed by U.S. Army Research Laboratory in 2003. The fabric of his body suit had been soaked with a shear-thickening fluid — hard microparticles of silica suspended in a polyethylene glycol solution. During normal movement, it acted like a liquid, but once a bullet struck, the material solidified into a rigid shield, preventing penetration. The suit had just saved his life.

At least for now.

The woman spoke again, coldly calm, as she slowly circled toward the door. “I rigged the building with C4 and TNT. Easy enough since the structure’s already scheduled for demolition. The Army was nice enough to have it all prewired. It just took a minor detonator modification to change the building’s implosion to one that will cause an explosive updraft .”

Gray pictured the resulting plume of smoke and debris riding high into the early morning sky. “The vials of anthrax…” he mumbled, but it was loud enough to be heard.

“It seemed fitting to use the base’s own demolition as a toxic delivery system.”

Christ, she had turned the entire building into a biological bomb.

With the strong winds, it was not only the base at risk, but the entire town of nearby Frederick.

Gray moved. She had to be stopped. But where was she?

He edged toward the door himself now, wary of her gun, but he couldn’t let that stop him. Too much was at stake. He tried flicking on his night-vision mode, but all he earned was another snap of flame by his ear. The heads-up display continued its erratic flashing, dazzling and confusing to the eye.

Screw it.

He thumbed the catch and yanked the helmet off.

The fresh wash of air smelled moldy and antiseptic at the same time. Staying low, he carried the helmet in one hand, the dagger in the other. He reached the back wall and hurried toward the door. He could see well enough to tell the swinging door hadn’t moved. The assassin was still in the room.

But where?

And what could he do to stop her? He squeezed the handle of his knife. Gun against dagger. Not good odds.

With his helmet off, he spotted a shift of shadows near the door. He stopped, going dead still. She was crouched three feet from the door, shielded by a table.

Watery light filtered from the hallway, glowing through the windows of the swinging doors. Dawn neared, brightening the passage beyond. The assassin would have to expose herself to make her escape. For the moment, she clung to the shadows of the windowless lab, unsure if her opponent was armed or not.

Gray had to stop playing this Dragon Lady’s game.

With a roundhouse swing, he threw his helmet toward the opposite side of the lab. It landed with a crash and tinkle of glass, shattering one of the old tanks.

He ran toward her position. He only had seconds.

She popped from her hiding place, swiveling to lay down fire in the direction of the noise. At the same time, she leaped gracefully toward the door, seeming to use the recoil from her gun to propel her.

Gray could not help but be impressed — but not enough to slow him.

With his arm already cocked, he whipped his dagger through the air. Weighted and balanced to perfection, the carbonized blade flew with unerring accuracy.

It struck the woman square in the hollow of her throat.

Gray continued his headlong rush.

Only then did he realize his mistake.

The dagger bounced harmlessly away and clattered to the floor.

Liquid body armor.

No wonder the Dragon Lady knew about his body suit. She was wearing the same.

The attack, though, threw off her leap. She landed in a half crash, plainly turning a knee. But ever the skilled assassin, she never lost sight of her target.

From a step away, she aimed the Sig Sauer at Gray’s face.

And this time, he had no helmet.

WE’VE LOST all contact again,” the technician said needlessly.

Painter had heard the loud crash a moment before, then all went deadly silent on the satellite feed.

“I still have base security,” his second said by the phone.

Painter tried to piece together the cacophony he had heard over the line. “He tossed his helmet.”

The other two men stared at him.

Painter studied the open dossier in front of him. Grayson Pierce was no fool. Besides his military expertise, the man had first come to Sigma’s attention because of his aptitude and intelligence tests. He was certainly above the norm, well above, but there were soldiers with even higher scores. What had been the final factor in the decision to recruit him had been his odd behavior while incarcerated at Leavenworth. Despite the hard labor of the camp, Grayson had taken up a rigorous regimen of study: in both advanced chemistry and Taoism. This disparity in his choice of study had intrigued Painter and Sigma’s former director, Dr. Sean McKnight.