No Man's Land

 

by David Baldacci

 

To the memory of Lynette Collin, an angel to us all

 

Chapter 1

 

PAUL ROGERS WAS waiting for them to come and kill him.

 

For ten years he had done this.

 

Now he had twenty-four more hours to go.

 

Or to live.

 

Rogers was six feet one inches tall and tipped the scale at one hundred and

eighty pounds; hardly any of it was fat. Most people looking only at his

chiseled body would be surprised to learn that he was over fifty years old. From

the neck down he looked like an anatomical chart, each muscle hardened and

defined as it melded into its neighbor.

 

However, from the neck up the years were clearly imprinted on his features, and

a guess of fifty would actually have been kind. The hair was thick but mostly

gray, and the face, though it had been behind bars and out of the sun for a