Spyder Web. Tom Grace

understand.’

      Dawson punched the play button on the VCR and the image of a Haitian fishing village filled the screen. Center frame was the recognizable face of Jean Arno, the junior Republican congressman from Florida.Arno was smiling and talking in fluent Haitian French, which was no surprise, since the lawmaker was the youngest son of Haitian immigrants.

      Accompanying the congressman were his aides, relief workers, and a few military officers. An officer near the rear of the group caught Kilkenny’s attention; it was Admiral Hopwood. The whole scene looked like a wellchoreographed photo opportunity designed to show the viewing audience at home how well American aid was working in Haiti. A loud popping sound from the jungle preceded a dizzying spin by the camera before it struck the ground. Though now skewed at a bizarre upward angle, the camera kept rolling, recording the screams of people and rapid blasts of approaching gunfire. Legs rushed past the lens, captured in their panicked flight. Then a group of men in black emerged from the jungle, spraying bullets wildly into the crowd as they entered the camera’s view. Soon, the only sounds to be heard were those of gunfire and the cries of the dying.

      One of the figures in black stood alone in the center of the village, dispassionately watching the carnage unfold. What struck Kilkenny most about the man was his eyes; they displayed nothing save a ruthless efficiency.

      Are those my eyes in battle? Kilkenny wondered.

      Three minutes into the massacre, several of the blackgarbed men dragged Arno and the surviving Americans before their leader. This man looked over the prisoners, stopping at the congressman, whom he viewed with disgust.

      ‘Fool!’ he spat in Arno’s face. ‘Will you never learn that your kind are not welcome in Haiti!’

      Arno and the others remained silent, denying the man any satisfaction he might find in their pleas for mercy. The leader studied his prisoners carefully as he finished a cigarette, weighing their fate in his mind. A flick of his fingers sent the smoldering butt arcing to the ground. He stared down for a moment, then pulled the machete from his belt and swung furiously into Arno’s neck. The others joined their leader, quickly hacking the Americans to death in an orgy of blood and violence.

      Once the Americans were dead, the leader raised his bloodstained machete and ordered his men back into the jungle. The raiding party left with their plunder and several female captives. Soon, the only sound that remained was the buzzing of flies under the hot Caribbean sun.

      Kilkenny swallowed back the bile in his throat as Dawson stopped the tape.

      ‘What you just saw happened yesterday. The central figure in this massacre is Etienne Masson, the leader of a tribe, for lack of a better word, that controls a large piece of rain forest surrounding Jacmel. He was a twenty-year veteran of the Haitian military and even attended the Green Beret program at Bragg before going native.’

      ‘So he’s not one of those cardboard generals we usually find in Third World hellholes.’

      ‘Just the opposite. Masson doesn’t seem to be after anything. While our troops were there, he laid low. He doesn’t care who is ruling Port-au-Prince as long as they stay out of his way. His cabal doesn’t even have a name, but the people living in their shadow call them la Mort Noir, the Black Death. What you just saw was the first bit of carelessness on Masson’s part.’

      ‘The camera,’Kilkenny answered, the gruesome images still playing in his mind.

      ‘Right. His men took out the cameraman first, but nobody bothered to get the tape. This is the first time that anyone outside of Haiti has seen Masson in nine years. The Haitians have tried to deal quietly with him on their own, without much luck. After yesterday, the Haitian government not only approves of the United States taking action; they expect it.We’ve got carte blanche, as long as we’re quiet about it. Everyone over there is scared shitless of this guy.’

      ‘Understandably so; it looks like he actually enjoys killing people.’

      Dawson sensed something beneath the surface of Kilkenny’s comment. He knew that Nolan was taking his mother’s death hard. He’d experienced similar feelings of self-doubt following his own parents’ deaths several years ago.

      ‘Masson does enjoy killing, and he’s good at it, but he’s not like you and me. We’re trained to kill, but we do it only when we have to. Masson is something else altogether.’ Dawson slid a folder bearing the CIA logo across his desk to Kilkenny. ‘Here’s the intelligence briefing on Masson.What’s known of his activities reads like a voodoo version of Apocalypse Now, with Masson playing the role of Colonel Kurtz.’

      Kilkenny began thumbing through the intelligence report. ‘Fine, what’s the op?’

      Dawson slipped a thick binder of materials across the desk to Kilkenny, then leaned back in his chair. ‘Quiet in, quiet out.You and your squad will launch in minisubs from the Columbia, six miles off Haiti’s southern coast. You’ll land on a remote beach and go hunting incountry. Your orders are to seek out and destroy the enemy.’

      Kilkenny looked over the preliminary mission time line. ‘A three-week op in December is cutting it a little close, sir. My tour is up at the end of next month.’

      ‘I’m well aware of your status, Lieutenant, and I know that you’re ready to get on with your life. I want you to know that I wouldn’t have called you back without a damn good reason.’

      ‘I know,’ Kilkenny replied, staring at the picture of a pair of young SEALs in Vietnam that Dawson proudly displayed on his wall. ‘Adm. Roger Hopwood.’

      Dawson looked over at the picture. ‘Jolly Roger and I go way back; we toured Nam together. I owe that man my life. He’s the reason JSOC chose us to carry out this mission. This is war, Nolan, and we need some meateaters on this op.’

      Dawson stood up and Kilkenny snapped to attention. ‘Lieutenant Kilkenny, you are to assemble your squad and brief them on this assignment. Go over the plan and be ready to brief me on your deployment preparations at eighteen hundred hours. Whatever you need, you’ll get. This one’s for Hopwood.’

      ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

       3

      NEW YORK

       November 25

      Alex Roe slipped out of bed and into the oversized Georgia Bulldog sweatshirt that she’d left on the floor the night before. The shirt draped from her softly curved shoulders to a point on her thigh that was an inch below immodest. She pushed the sleeves up past her elbows, ran her fingers through her disheveled shoulder-length brunette hair, and set about finding something to eat. Roe firmly believed that her daily regimen of diet and exercise had kept her lithe body free of the fatty deposits that accumulate on so many people over the age of forty.

      Inside the master bathroom, Randall Johnson was in the midst of his morning ablutions. She marveled at the beauty of the renovated turn-of-the-century factory that now housed Johnson’s multilevel condominium. Many of the building’s original architectural features remained exposed, lending an historic flavor to the contemporary elements of modern living.

      The sun, barely over the horizon, poured light through the tall arched windows of the condo’s great room. Long shadows cast by the morning light exaggerated the depth of the brickwork’s relief; the terracotta details formed a study in contrast.

      In the kitchen, she ground some fresh gourmet beans and started the coffeemaker. The morning was cold, but pleasant for November in New York, and, after digging out from an early snow, the city was preparing for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving parade. Roe took an apple from the refrigerator, sat down at the sunlit kitchen table, and spread out the morning paper.

      Twenty minutes later, she finished her morning reverie, poured another cup of coffee, and walked into the den, where her laptop computer sat waiting for her. With the machine switched on and herself