The Bourne Dominion by Robert & Lustbader Ludlum Page B

flatbed truck.
    “
¡Ahora se alejan de los jeeps!
”
    “
¡Haz lo que dice!
” the commander shouted through a fit of coughing.
    The men backed away from the jeeps; Bourne shoved the commander forward into one and climbed in beside him. A rebel lunged for his pistoland Bourne shot him in the shoulder. As he spun away and fell to the ground, Bourne said, “
¿Tu turno?
” Your turn? The other rebel raised his hands and did not budge.
    “
¡Si vienen después de nosotros
,” Bourne called back to the men as he started the vehicle and put it into gear, “
lo mato!
” If you come after us, I’ll kill him.
    He stepped on the accelerator and they sped away from the smoking tunnel.

7

    T HE MOMENT PETER got back to Treadstone HQ, he fired up his computer, logged in his code name, using the algorithm of the day, and scoured all the clandestine services’ databases for the word
Samaritan.
He wasn’t surprised to receive a null finding. He sat staring at the blank screen for a moment, then typed in “Indigo Ridge.”
    This time he got an immediate hit. He read the government assessment with mounting fascination. Indigo Ridge, an area in California, was ground zero for the mining of rare earths. Rare earths, he read, were essential for rechargeable nickel hydride batteries—something he used every day, but never gave a thought to. The real name was lanthanum nickel hydride—a rare earth. Rare earths were used in every laser as well as in electronic warfare, jamming devices, the electromagnetic railgun, the Long Range Acoustic Device, and the Area Denial System used on the Stryker vehicle. The list of cutting-edge weapons needing rare earths was staggering.
    The next paragraphs dealt with NeoDyme, the company created to mine the rare earths at Indigo Ridge. NeoDyme had just gone public, but it had the backing of the US government. Peter immediately understoodthe strategic importance of NeoDyme and Indigo Ridge. In that event, Samaritan was linked in some way with the rare earth mine. But what was its purpose?
    Peter got up and stretched. He waved away Ann, his secretary, as he emerged from his office, went over to get himself some coffee and a stale doughnut. He stirred sugar and half-and-half into his mug, took it and the doughnut back into his office to have a think.
    Ever since he could remember, sugar had been a great stimulator of creative thinking for him. As he chomped down on the doughnut, he thought about the meeting between Hendricks and Danziger. And then the thought came: What if Samaritan was an interagency initiative? That would make it huge, indeed. And again, Peter felt the sharp pang of being left out. If Hendricks didn’t trust him, then why did he want Peter heading up Treadstone? It made no sense to him. Peter didn’t like mysteries, especially when they cropped up in his territory. And then he thought of something else that made him sit up straight. In trying to find out about Samaritan he’d been able to access all the clandestine services’ databases. Hendricks had told him that, almost as an aside. Odd, considering, so far as Peter was aware, it was an unprecedented coup. The various services were notoriously zealous in guarding their own data, even after the well-publicized revamping following 9/11. Being on the inside, Peter knew that plan was for PR purposes because the American public had to be calmed and soothed. The fact remained that when it came to interagency intel sharing nothing much had changed. The clandestine services community was still a feudal nightmare of separate fiefdoms, lorded over by political-minded mandarins jockeying for congressional funding while desperately staving off budget cuts and staff downsizing forced by the current economic climate.
    Dusting off his fingertips, he took a swig of coffee and dived back into the top-secret soup he had at his fingertips, courtesy of his boss. At some point, he wondered whether Hendricks had had an ulterior motive in getting