bone fragments ground against each other, further mincing the tendons and ligaments. Through cracked and bleeding lips, he muttered long forgotten pieces of scripture, freely quoting the Talmud and the Old and New Testaments, mangling faiths in an attempt to supplicate a god, any god.
"Lo, I walk through the valley of the shadow of death." It sounded more like poetry than prayer.
"Thou shall not kill," he screamed, but the sound was little more than a dry croak.
"You are a spy for America," the young terrorist leader accused again, sliding closer to Jakob. "Only your death has worth to us."
"It's not true," Jakob Steiner cried.
"You were sent here to steal from us, and we were sent to stop you."
"Oh, God, please, I only study the past. I don't care about--"
The cadre leader, a man who called himself Mahdi, crashed the butt of his rifle against Steiner's head just at the hair line. The blow was not enough to kill, and Jakob screamed loudly, curling into a ball in a purely reflexive gesture.
Mahdi stood and swung his weapon down again, missing Steiner's head but breaking his collarbone with the blow. Like jackals, the others sprang on him, raining blows on the defenseless scientist. Steiner screamed for only a few seconds before being beaten into unconsciousness. Soon Steiner was dead, but Mahdi allowed his men to continue for another minute before calling an end to the assault.
"Enough," he said, and his men backed away from the bloody corpse. "Strip the body and then we'll return to his camp to erase all evidence of his presence."
Mahdi tossed aside his old and worn boots and replaced them with Steiner's before joining his troops for the run back to the base camp. There were a number of items that would fetch good money on the black market in Sudan, and he wanted to make sure his undisciplined men did not ruin them in their frenzy of destruction.
Arlington, Virginia Four Months Later
Philip Mercer was in the habit of waking just before dawn so he could watch the pearly light seep through the skylight above his bed. These early-morning minutes were an important time for him. It was when he did his best thinking, oftentimes coalescing thoughts that had come to him in his sleep.
The night before, he'd helped his friend, Harry White, celebrate his eightieth birthday. The octogenarian was sleeping off the night's excesses on a downstairs couch. Mercer hadn't indulged nearly as much as Harry, so his head felt reasonably clear, but this morning his mind was troubled. He wanted to stay relaxed, but the muscles in his legs and back began to tning blois profession. Within the hard-rock mining industry, his capabilities were almost legendary. A recent article in a trade publication credited him with saving more than four hundred lives following mining disasters and in the next paragraph detailed the more than three billion dollars in mineral finds he'd made for various mining concerns all over the globe. His fees had made him a wealthy man, and maybe that was part of his problem. He'd become too comfortable.
The thrill of making a new find or the adrenaline rush of delving into the earth to pull out trapped men had begun to pale. Since his struggle against Ivan Kerikov and his ecoterrorist allies in Alaska last October, Mercer was having a hard time returning to his normal life. He felt a hollowness that just wouldn't go away. He wanted to believe he hadn't become addicted to that kind of mortal danger, but it was difficult to convince himself. Pitting his reputation against the normal hazards of his career didn't seem to be enough anymore.
His street was lined with identical three-story town-houses, close enough to the city center to be convenient but far enough away to remain quiet. Unlike the others, Mercer lived in his alone and had done extensive remodeling to turn it into his home. The lion's share of his income went into its mortgage. The front quarter of the building was open from floor to roof with his bedroom