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at the far end. Pierce wandered in that direction. Alpha did not follow. Some other agent must be covering that exit.
    She got close enough to see a second man studying a rack of magazines a few steps inside the entryway. Call him Bravo.
    Pierce left the store, knowing that Bravo would not be so conspicuous as to follow immediately. Another person would pick up her trail.
    When she paused by the shop window just outside the exit, pretending to study a display of leather luggage, she caught the reflection of the third man, Charlie. He had started walking and stopped when she did.
    Clumsy, Charlie. Poor technique. Time for you to take a refresher course at Quantico .
    She entered a coffee shop and ordered a burger and Coke, her first food other than a couple of granola bars she’d consumed in the car. She sat at a small table with a view of the concourse and ate her meal, barely tasting it, knowing only that she needed nourishment to stay alert.
    When she left, she took care to wad up her paper napkin and leave it on her chair.
    In the concourse she paused to fiddle with her suitcase, a maneuver that afforded her the chance to see yet another man—Delta—approach her table and retrieve the napkin. There was nothing written on it or hidden in it, but her pursuers couldn’t know that. Observing what might have been a dead drop, they had to check it out.
    A similar ruse revealed the fifth agent, Echo, who peeled off to follow an innocent traveler after Pierce bumped into him near the escalators. This could have been a brush pass, the surreptitious transfer of an item in a seemingly accidental moment of contact.
    Pierce was pleased with herself. Not only had she forced Echo to reveal himself, but she’d sent him on a diversion, improving the odds.
    Perhaps she could lose another one. She picked out a man at random and asked him the way to the taxi stand. This was information she did not need, having checked the airport’s layout in her road atlas while driving. The man snapped off an answer and bustled away.
    Another bystander took off after him. The sixth agent. Foxtrot.
    Pierce kept walking. She saw a woman break into stride just ahead of her, obviously having been posted there in an advance position.
    Number seven.
    She hadn’t expected to have to count that high. How many of them were there, for Christ’s sake?
    A custodian was cleaning out a trash can. She caught the hint of a wire threaded from his ear to his collar. Stand-alone body rig. He was number eight.
    There couldn’t be more. But watching her from an alcove near a candy machine, a man wearing a priest’s collar. Nine.
    Was that all of them? She took out her compact. In the mirror she glimpsed a male figure watching her from an upper level of the concourse. He was an older man with the close-cropped gray hair of a military officer, and she had a feeling he was the one in charge, looking down from a high vantage point on his operatives, who had spread throughout the terminal while Pierce was eating her burger.
    He made ten. And she had no reason to think she’d spotted them all.
    She scanned the area and noted security cameras installed in the ceilings. By now, someone would be watching her on the monitors.
    She had underestimated the bureau. They’d pulled out all the stops for her. Multiple redundant modes of surveillance. She was caught in a box inside another box inside yet another….
    Even so, she wasn’t out of options. Not by a long shot.
    She entered a ladies’ room, where two women were chatting at a row of sinks before a large mirror. One of them had flamboyant red hair that looked artificial. The other was dark-haired like Pierce herself.
    Pierce nodded. They would do.
    Taking a stall, she shut the door without latching it, then placed her suitcase on the toilet tank and stood on the lid. No one looking at the space under the door could tell that the stall was occupied.
    She reached down to her belt buckle and opened the secret compartment that