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the plush and cavernous presidential suite with natural night-vi-
sion, gliding over broad wood desktops scattered with unfinished
paper work and coasting past still more portraits and other relics
of past office-holders, until the gnat came to alight on the purple
sheets of the four-poster king-sized bed where the leader of the
United States and his wife lay side by side, not touching.
At last, it was time to do the deed. Smoothly and slowly,
like grease being pumped from a tiny tap into an invisible mold,
the gnat began to grow larger and much longer. A black carapace
gave way to equally strong and black overlapping scales. All six
legs retracted and his eyes changed from bulging and multifac-
eted to indrawn and slitted with transparent lids. Finally, when
each bulge in his body has been smoothed into a slender nine
foot long cord of reptilian flesh curled up on the very foot of the
bed, the King Cobra reared up and threw open his hood, hissing
softly with pleasure at this new shape.
This was a form suited for assassination! His body glided
along the silk sheets with barely a whisper. Unblinking snake
eyes not only captured the room in vivid infrared, but his sense
of touch was so keen, he could count the heartbeats of each
person in the bed.
This is what it’s all about. The moment of the kill, the help-
less animal cornered. He slithered fluidly toward his target. This
is why he was a natural assassin. Animals don’t care what they
hunt. In the wild, it’s kill or be killed, and the strong feed.
After pausing for a moment on the political leader’s pil-
low, Adrian tasted the air. No change in the pheromones of the
humans, no trace of fear or adrenaline. His presence was still un-
detected. Orienting himself toward the largest source of warmth
in the bed, he bared his fangs and, too fast for human eyes to
track, he struck.
The next fifteen seconds would go down as one of the
greatest and most mysterious moments in American history. The
leader of the nation woke in an instant and screamed his death

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