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their reactions that had caught his attention. They hadn't been ready for his sudden change of direction, and their attempts to recover had created brief but discernible breaks in the pedestrian flow of traffic on the crowded and slippery sidewalks. Not enough of a break to pinpoint the trackers themselves or to confirm any kind of intended action. But more than enough to suggest that some kind of focused activity—focused, that is, upon his physical movements—might be going on in his immediate vicinity.
    In other words, a surveillance.
    There were at least two of them out there, he figured. Two and possibly a third, because even after he had managed to jar them out of their pattern a second time (which gave him a better sense of their distance and relative positioning), he still had an uneasy sense of some other presence lurking out there in the growing darkness. Something dark and sinister and hidden, and therefore, at least in Lightstone's suspicious mind, something infinitely more dangerous.
    But what?
    Henry Lightstone was very much aware that only six months ago he and the surviving members of his covert team had accidentally tripped across an illicit conspiracy—code-named Operation Counter Wrench— between government and big business to destroy the environmental movement, using as their primary weapon a lethal band of twelve international counterterrorist experts. The fact that he and his fellow agents had survived and persevered, in the face of overwhelming odds, Lightstone knew, had far more to do with luck, happenstance, and comradery than anything else.
    But the Counter Wrench gang had been taken out, Lightstone reminded himself. Gerd Maas, Alex Chareaux, and Roy Parker were in custody. Buddy and Sonny Chareaux were dead. And so were the bureaucratic ringleaders, Reston Wolfe and Lisa Abercombie.
    A clean sweep.
    And now the team was working a brand-new covert operation, in a completely different part of the country, so there shouldn't have been anyone hanging around that they needed to worry about.
    Or at least nobody that we know anything about, Lightstone corrected, remembering that there were still some loose ends regarding Abercombie and Wolfe's foiled conspiracy plans to ransack Greenpeace and Earth First!—not to mention several of the other major environmental activist groups—that he and his fellow agents hadn't managed to unravel yet. Such as the source of the millions of dollars that the two had used to fund their illicit operation. And the possibility that there were other conspirators still out there, waiting for a chance to renew their assault on the environmental movement or to take their revenge upon a small team of conspiracy-foiling agents.
    But even taking all those issues into account, the fact that he was being followed while walking thorough the middle of Boston Common, in the state of Massachusetts, at the onset of a new covert investigation, was still extremely disturbing to Special Agent Henry Lightstone.
    The reason being that as far as he and his fellow agents of Bravo Team were concerned, they had managed to pull off a classically clean penetration. After two months of preparatory groundwork, and five weeks of hands-on construction to link up the warehouse and safe house, not a single person had displayed anything more than a casual interest in their activities.
    Or at least not until now, Lightstone reminded himself as he continued to stroll slowly along the narrow asphalt pathway that wove through the historic Boston Common.
    He could have stopped at one of the public phone booths and called for backup, but he didn't want to do that. Not until he got some answers.
    He had already tried to expose the tag on the main streets in downtown Boston. But within minutes the streets had suddenly been filled with hundreds of people leaving work early, hurrying to their car or bus or train before the unexpected storm tied everything up. Everyone was walking fast, and hunching forward, and