Without warning

He disappeared from the screen as she withdrew the fibre-optic wire. For thirty seconds she crouched, waiting, but no sound or movement came from within. That was actually kind of impressive. This guy was no amateur – but he was not necessarily an ally either.

She began to edge away, eventually making the stairs, where she stood, adjusting herself to the sounds, to the feel of the house. It felt like an inhabited dwelling, but that wasn’t down to any bullshit sixth sense. She already knew the lower floors were occupied. What she didn’t know was where her targets were holed up.

She listened, willing her nausea to recede to the edge of her consciousness, breathing as she had been taught, to settle her nervous system.

She could hear the angry rumble of battle. A jet aircraft shrieking low to the west.

The creaking and settling of the building as the ground underneath moved fractionally in response to the pounding of high explosives and the grinding of heavy armour through streets no more than a mile away.

A radio, playing Arabic music.

Snoring. Some muttering, but not conversational – probably someone talking in their sleep.

The clink of china cups or glasses.

Quiet laughter.

And then a ringing in her ears, which had been constant for two weeks. Her pulse and heartbeat. The silent advance of the tumour that was eating her from the inside out.

Caitlin floated down the stairs, using a technique she had studied under the Ninjutsu master Harunaka Hoshino, who had trained her to cross a nightingale floor with a minimum of noise. There was no way to eliminate the singing of the boards, but Hoshino taught her to quieten its chirping. The stairs of the old French residence were no challenge after that.

She paused on the second last step. The house was dark, the power grid having failed long ago, but with her NVGs she could make out a weak, fluttering light emanating from under two of the four doors on this floor. She stilled herself, becoming as stonelike as a human being could, and opening all of her senses wide to let the world rush in.

She smelt old food. Meat gone cold. And coffee.

A body shifted and rolled over on the floor nearby, lifting up slightly, and settling back down with a light thump.

A sheet or blanket rustled.

A wind-up clock ticked.

In one of the lighted rooms a page turned.

Every hair on Caitlin’s body bristled, in an ancient autonomic response to danger – a hangover from her animal ancestors.

She glided down the hallway to the door behind which she knew at least one man was awake and reading. Again, she settled into stillness and allowed the life of the building – just a soft heartbeat and a murmured breath here, at this dead hour – to flow into her.

Another page turned and she heard mumbling in Arabic from the same room: ‘O ye who believe! When ye meet the Unbelievers in hostile array, never turn your backs on them. If any do turn his back to them on such a day - unless it be in a stratagem of war, or to retreat to his own troops - he draws on himself the wrath of Allah and his abode is Hell, an evil refuge indeed.’

Caitlin visualised the small room on the other side of the door. A single bedroom, probably given to a child in happier days. A window overlooking the street behind. No connecting doors to either room beside it.

She examined the handle. An old-fashioned brass knob without a keyhole. There could be a latch on the other side, but of that she could not be certain.

There was only one thing for it. Caitlin sheathed her fighting knife. Powered down and raised her night-vision goggles. And waited.

The mumbling and page turning continued.

She stood, motionless, for six minutes until her opportunity arrived – another jet, roaring close overhead within a mile. As the whining howl reached its maximum intensity, she calmly reached out, opened the door, got a sight picture of one man-young and shirtless, sitting up in a small bed, leaning against a pillow, reading, and then looking up at her, all innocence and dawning bewilderment as the assassin raised a hand-tooled, frequency-shifting silenced pistol and squeezed the trigger twice.

Two muted clacks, almost like a stapler, and the subsonic.300 Whisper rounds left the muzzle of the weapon at about 980 feet per second, slowing only fractionally as they entered his brainpan and scattered the contents all over the room.

She swept the space automatically, but already knew it to be empty. A quick puff to blow out his candle, after which she pulled the door closed and turned down towards the next lighted room.

This one was silent. No muttering. No page turning. Again she waited.