Cactus's voice had faded as Jason wandered into the dark living room, his legs heavy, his lids falling over his eyes like lead weights. He dropped to the couch, swinging his legs slowly, with effort, one at a time, up on the cushions; he stared at the ceiling. Rest is a weapon, battles won and lost ... Philippe d'Anjou. Medusa. His inner screen went black and sleep came.

A screaming, pulsating siren erupted, deafening, incessant, echoing throughout the cavernous house like a sonic tornado. Bourne spastically whipped his body around and sprang off the couch, at first disoriented, unsure of where he was and for a terrible moment ... of who he was.

"Cactus!" he roared, racing out of the ornate living room into the hallway. "Cactus!" he shouted again, hearing his voice lost in the rapid, rhythmic crescendos of the siren-alarm. "Where are you?"

Nothing. He ran to the door of the study, gripping the knob. It was locked! He stepped back and crashed his shoulder against it, once, twice, a third time with all the speed and strength he could summon. The door splintered, then gave way and Jason hammered his foot against the central panel until it collapsed; he went inside and what he found caused the killing machine that was the product of Medusa and beyond to stare in ice-cold fury. Cactus was sprawled over the desk, under the light of the single lamp, in the same chair that had held the murdered general, his blood forming a pool of red on the blotter-a corpse. ... No, not a corpse! The right hand moved, Cactus was alive!

Bourne ran to the desk and gently raised the old man's head, the shrill, deafening, all-encompassing alarm making communication-if communication were possible-impossible. Cactus opened his dark eyes, his trembling right hand moving down the blotter, his forefinger curved and tapping the top of the desk.

"What is it?" yelled Jason. The hand kept moving back toward the edge of the blotter, the tapping more rapid. "Below? Underneath?" With minuscule-nearly imperceptible-motions of his head, Cactus nodded in the affirmative. "Under the desk!" shouted Bourne, beginning to understand. He knelt down to the right of Cactus and felt under the thin top drawer, then to the side– He found it! A button. Again gently, he moved the heavy rolling chair inches to the left and centered his eyes on the button. Beneath it, in tiny white letters on a black plastic strip, was the answer.

Aux. Alarm

Jason pressed the button; instantly the shrieking pandemonium was cut off. The ensuing silence was nearly as deafening, the adjustment to it nearly as terrifying.

"How were you hit?" asked Bourne. "How long ago? ... If you can talk, just whisper, no energy at all, do you understand?"

"Oh, Br'er, you're too much," whispered Cactus, in pain. "I was a black cabdriver in Washington, man. I've been here before. It ain't fatal, boy, I gotta slug in the upper chest."

"I'll get a doctor right away-our friend Ivan, incidentally-but if you can, tell me what happened while I move you to the floor and look at the damage." Jason slowly, carefully lowered the old man off the chair and onto the throw rug beneath the bay window. He tore off Cactus's shirt; the bullet had gone through the flesh of the left shoulder. With short, swift movements Bourne ripped the shirt into strips and tightly wrapped a primitive bandage around his friend's chest and between the underarm and the shoulder. "It's not much," said Jason, "but it'll hold you for a while. Go on."

"He's out there, Br'er!" Cactus coughed weakly, lying back on the floor. "He's got a big mother 'fifty-seven magnum with a silencer; he pinned me through the window, then smashed it and climbed inside. ... He-he ..."

"Easy! Don't talk, never mind-"

"I gotta. The brothers out there, they ain't got no hardware. He'll pick 'em off! ... I played deep dead and he was in a hurry-oh, was he in a hurry! Look over there, will ya?" Jason swung his head in the direction of Cactus's gesture. A dozen or so books had been yanked out of a shelf on the side wall and strewn on the floor. The old man continued, his voice growing weaker. "He went over to the bookcase like in a panic, until he found what he wanted ... then to the door, that 'fifty-seven ready for bear, if you follow me. ... I figured it was you he was after, that he'd seen you through the window go out to the other room, and I tell ya, I was workin' my right knee like a runnin' muskrat 'cause I found that alarm button an hour ago and knew I had to stop him-"

"Easy!"

"I gotta tell you ... I couldn't move my hands 'cause he'd see me, but my knee hit that sucker and the siren damn near blew me out of the chair. ... The honky bastard fell apart. He slammed the door, locked it, and beat his way out of here back through the window." Cactus's neck arched back, the pain and the exhaustion overtaking him. "He's out there, Br'er Rabbit-"

"That's enough!" ordered Bourne as he cautiously reached up, snapping off the desk lamp, leaving the dim light from the hallway through the shattered door as the only illumination. "I'm calling Alex; he can send the doctor-"

Suddenly, from somewhere outside, there was a high-pitched scream, a roar of shock and anguish Jason knew only too well. So did Cactus, who whispered, his eyes shut tight: "He got one. That fucker got one of the brothers!"

"I'm reaching Conklin," said Jason, pulling the phone off of the desk. "Then I'll go out and get him. ... Oh, Christ! The line's out-it's been cut!"

"That honky knows his way around here."

"So do I, Cactus. Stay as quiet as you can. I'll be back for you-"

There was another scream, this lower, more abrupt, an expulsion of breath more than a roar.

"May sweet Jesus forgive me," muttered the old black man painfully, meaning the words. "There's only one brother left-"

"If anyone should ask forgiveness, it's me," cried Bourne, his voice guttural, half choking. "Goddamn it! I swear to you, Cactus, I never thought, never even considered, that anything like this would happen."

" 'Course you didn't. I know you from back to the old days, Br'er, and I never heard of you asking anyone to risk anything for you. ... It's always been the other way around."

"I'm going to pull you over," interrupted Jason, tugging on the rug, maneuvering Cactus to the right side of the desk, the old man's left hand close enough to reach the auxiliary alarm. "If you hear anything or see anything or feel anything, turn on the siren."

"Where are you going? I mean how?"

"Another room. Another window."

Bourne crept across the floor to the mutilated door, lurched through it and ran into the living room. At the far end was a pair of French doors that led to an outside patio; he recalled seeing white wrought-iron lawn furniture on the south end of the house when he was with the guards. He twisted the knob and slipped outside, pulling the automatic from his belt, shutting the right door, and crouching, making his way to the shrubbery at the edge of the grass. He had to move quickly. Not only was there a third life in the balance, a third unrelated, unwarranted death, but a killer who could be his shortcut to the crimes of the new Medusa, and those crimes were his bait for the Jackal! A diversion, a magnet, a trap ... the flares-part of the equipment he had brought with him to Manassas. The two emergency "candles" were in his left rear pocket, each six inches long and bright enough to be seen for miles; ignited together yet spaced apart they would light up Swayne's property like two searchlights. One in the south drive, the other by the kennels, possibly waking the drugged dogs, bewildering them, infuriating them-Do it! Hurry.

Jason scrambled across the lawn, his eyes darting everywhere, wondering where the stalking killer was and how the innocent quarry that Cactus had enlisted was evading him. One was experienced, the other not, and Bourne could not permit the latter's life to be wasted.