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“As far as you’re concerned, the important things to understand about GHB are that it’s odorless, tasteless, and instantaneously induces rapid sleep or coma at elevated doses. And it becomes undetectable soon afterward,” Eckers said. “In fact, it’s synthesized from a chemical that’s normally manufactured in our brains… that’s present in every one of us… and that increases its concentration in a human body as death occurs. Which makes it a forensic pathologist’s nightmare, and a defense attorney’s dream. Especially in the form my own people have developed.”

  Silence. Nimec had realized he was almost out of time, his thoughts racing along as he listened.

  “Your drug doesn’t change anything,” he said. “You use it on one of us, you think the other’s going to stand and watch? Knowing you can’t chance shooting that damned gun of yours? Or you want to convince me you’ve got designer bullets that evaporate and close their own wounds?”

  Eckers looked at him. Again something turned in his eyes. And again Kettering slipped closer to Nimec, easing slightly behind him, almost breathing down his neck.

  And then Eckers extended the Steyr further in front of him.

  “I don’t need both of your bodies to be found,” he said. “There’s Blake, whose skull will have been pounded by the ocean rocks. And then there’s one or the other of you that will be dredged up, it makes no difference whom. Two floaters, a third body lost to the sea, and that will be that.”

  No, Nimec thought. No, it wouldn’t. Because the man holding him at gunpoint was professional, and smart enough to figure he’d probably have gotten in touch with somebody at UpLink about his sightings at the harbor, and that UpLink’s investigators would be more than suspicious if he was the one who disappeared. That happened, they would know without question what took place out here. They would know, and wouldn’t quit till they found a way to prove it.

  Which exposed the gunman’s bluff. He needed Nimec. Needed his body intact to pull off his scheme.

  Leaving Annie — and Annie alone — immediately vulnerable to the gun.

  Nimec did not wait so much as another heartbeat to make his move. Glancing quickly around, he spun in a half circle and snatched hold of Kettering’s wrist with his right hand, wrenching it up and backward as he jammed his left shoulder against Kettering’s chest, driving into him with all the momentum he could summon. Kettering grunted and began to stumble backward, but Nimec held on to his wrist, seeing the hank of cloth bunched in his gloved hand, saturated with the goddamn sleep drug he’d been about to smother him with. Nimec simultaneously jerked the hand up again and twisted it over and around, slapping it over Kettering’s face, holding it there over his nose and mouth.

  “Stop or I’ll kill the bitch!” Eckers yelled, waving his Steyr as he moved forward in a kind of charge. “You hear me, I said sto—”

  “Down, Annie!” Nimec said, shouting over him. And she did, hurling herself flat to the deck as he whipped Kettering around in front of him, pushing his suddenly limp body between Eckers and himself while reaching for the stock of the submachine gun against Kettering’s side, tearing it from its harness, and getting his finger around the trigger to squeeze off a two-round burst.

  His chest soaked with blood, Eckers wobbled on his feet a moment, looking straight at Nimec as Kettering sagged and then fully collapsed between them. Then his eyes rolled up in his sockets so that only their whites were visible, and he also dropped to the deck.

  Nimec turned, hurried to Annie, knelt beside her.

  “You all right?” he said, taking hold of her arm.

  She nodded, started to push herself onto her knees, trembling all over.

  “C’mon, honey,” Nimec said, helping her up. He shot a glance around toward the buoys across the water. “We’ve got to move fast.”

  * * *

  “That’s it,” said the racer’s copilot. He’d heard the report of the Steyr TMP come echoing across the water perhaps a second before. “They’ve done the woman.”

  At the wheel in the silence following the gunshots, Harrison lifted his binoculars to his eyes and peered eastward. Having reached the safe passage lane marked by the buoys, yards from where the broken points of the ledge had emerged above the receding tide, he had only to follow orders and wait for Eckers and Kettering to bring the pontooner in their direction. By the time it arrived, enough of the formation would be out of the water for the pleasure boat and its unconscious passengers to be driven into the rocks, a seeming mishap that would claim the lives of both the guide and their prime target. The woman’s body would need to be transferred to the racer and disposed of separately, and Harrison assumed the job would fall on him, as it had with that bookkeeper and the hired men who’d come to take him off the island. Carving them up had been unpleasant but not unprecedented — Harrison did whatever was required and accepted his pay, that was all.

  His lenses focused on the pontoon boat now, he suddenly straightened and cursed under his breath.

  The racer’s copilot looked at him. “What’s wrong?” he said.

  Harrison let the binocs sink down from his face.

  “They’re still standing,” he said, disconcerted. “Both targets.”

  A stunned pause.

  “How about Eckers?”

  “I can’t see him,” Harrison said.

  “Kettering?”

  Harrison had raised the glasses back to his eyes.

  “No,” he said.

  The copilot looked at him again. “Shit,” he said. “This is unbelievable.”

  Harrison shook his head.

  “You read reports on that Sword op,” he said. “There was nothing in them to indicate it would be simple.”

  Silence.

  “How do we carry on?” said the copilot.

  Harrison reached for the ignition and their engine revved.

  “First we’ll need to get on top of that boat,” he said. “Then we need to decide.”

  * * *

  His hands on the pontoon boat’s wheel, Nimec glanced back over his shoulder and spotted the racer approaching from the vicinity of the underwater ledge. When he’d heard its outboards come to life only moments ago, it had been too far off to see with the naked eye. The pilot was pushing it hard.

  “Annie,” Nimec said. “Think you can hold us steady?”

  Beside him in the pilot’s station, Annie stood gripping the radio handset she’d used to contact UpLink’s temporary facility across the channel, providing its operators with Nimec’s coded identifiers for emergency assistance. Nodding, she clipped it into place on the console, eased closer to him.

  “I can try,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

  Nimec looked at her.

  “This boat’ll move at forty-five, fifty miles an hour if I really pour it on,” he said. “The racer can double, maybe triple that speed.”

  “We won’t be able to outdistance it.”

  “No,” he said. “But we might not have to.”

  She shook her head to indicate her confusion.

  “Think about it, Annie,” he said. “Those guys on our tail are handcuffed as far as how they can finish their business, same as the ones who stayed aboard with us. Their whole setup depended on making it look like Blake ran us into the outcrop.”

  It took barely a second for understanding to flood Annie’s eyes.

  “They won’t want to shoot,” she said.

  “That’s what I’m betting,” Nimec said. “And fast as their boat travels, ours is a lot bigger and heavier. They try to ram us, it’ll be the racer that takes the worse beating.”

  Annie nodded. Then, not quite lost to their hearing under the growl of the vessel at their rear, a low moan rose from where Blake lay sprawled on deck.

  “He needs a doctor,” she said. “If we don’t get him some medical help…”

  “I know, Annie,” Nimec said. “But we can’t do anything for him until we shake loose that chase boat… and for that I need you to take the wheel.”

  She nodded
again, shifted places with him.

  “I’ve got us headed southeast toward that wilderness preserve Murthy talked about,” Nimec said, and motioned toward the instrument panel’s compass and GPS displays. “Keep us on course.” He hesitated. “And if there’s any gunfire, keep your head down.”

  Annie looked at him, fingers around the wheel now.

  “I thought we’re betting against that,” she said.

  Nimec squeezed her shoulder.

  “Just in case,” he said, and slid from behind the console.

  * * *

  Nimec examined the Steyr he’d taken from Annie’s attacker and set its firing lever to full-automatic mode. He’d already ejected its magazine, determined it had plenty of rounds left, then palmed it back into its slot. If he was right and the chase team was still locked into its original plan, a few bullets would be all he needed.

  He stood with his back to the pilot’s station and looked out beyond the pontooner’s stern. The speedboat was close and getting closer, spray flying off to either side of its windscreen, water sheeting off its flanks, a white chop of foam trailing behind it. Seabirds squalled overhead or launched from the water in flapping clouds, terrified by the loud roar of its powerplants.

  Nimec saw the racer angle off to starboard and hurried to the safety rail. Then he waited, his finger on the trigger.

  The speedboat gained by the second. Came closer, closer, closer…

  Finally it caught up, nosing past the stern, then rapidly pulling even with the pontooner’s keel, continuing to surge forward until the two vessels were moving along side-by-side.

  Nimec stood there waiting some more. The racer trimmed speed to avoid overshooting its target, then veered in sharply as if to broadside it, but Nimec knew that was bluff for the very reasons he’d given Annie. The lightweight strike boat would get the worst of any collision.

  He kept watching the racer as it clipped along beside him, a slim band of water separating the two vessels now. He saw the racer’s copilot move to its low portside gunwale, a Steyr in his hand. Then Nimec raised the barrel of his own gun to the safety rail’s upper bar, tilted it upward, and fired a volley high across the racer’s bow.

  The copilot stared through his speed goggles, his gun pointed at Nimec over the gunwale. But Nimec didn’t think he would return fire unless directly engaged… these men were pros and it would be clear that his salvo had been a warning.

  His gunstock against his arm, he met the copilot’s gaze and waited.

  Whatever happened next, Nimec knew the call wasn’t his to make.

  * * *

  “I’m pulling off them.” Harrison said, his voice raised above the sound of the outboards.

  The copilot glanced at him, his submachine gun still aimed at the pontoon boat.

  “You’re sure?” he asked.

  Harrison nodded.

  “Those shots were a message,” he said. “He doesn’t want a fight and our orders haven’t changed.”

  The copilot understood. Eckers had stressed that they were to avoid using their guns on either the boat or the Sword man, were to refrain from firing at all absent a deadly and immediate threat — and even then there must be absolutely no other recourse. The mission’s success hinged upon it looking like an accident.

  He lowered the Steyr’s barrel from the gunwale.

  “What now?”

  “We radio Beauchart,” Harrison said.

  “That gutless prick?”

  Harrison nodded.

  “Eckers is down,” he said. “Gutless or not he’s next in command.”

  The copilot frowned at him. “I don’t like it,” he said.

  Harrison wrenched the wheel to his right and went sheering away from the pontooner.

  “Beauchart can have the choppers pick this up or do whatever else he bloody well wants,” he said. “It’s out of our hands from here.”

  SEVEN

  EASTERN CALIFORNIA APRIL 2006

  They had started out in the dodge coupe from their appointed meeting place in Sonora and driven south on State Route 99 to cross the San Joaquin River some miles above Fresno. There Lathrop turned onto a series of local roads that took them eastward through the rolling dry country with its hills of eroded sandstone and occasional clumps of rough grass, sagebrush, and piñons on their dull, sunbaked faces.

  The air conditioner worked well enough and they kept their windows shut as the temperature outside steadily climbed. Ricci sat in the passenger side saying very little, observing the monotonous scenery, and sipping coffee from the lid of the thermos bottle in the compartment between them. It had a thin, stale taste that got less palatable as they rode along, and was barely lukewarm by the time he noticed Lathrop slow the car coming up on a sign for some place called Amaranto.

  Ricci remembered the smell of the coffee Julia Gordian had brought and how it had spread pleasantly in his dining room. Then he lowered his window partway, and as the hot air outside hit him, he extended his arm away from the flank of the car and sloshed what he had left in the plastic thermos lid onto the dusty blacktop.

  Lathrop looked over at him.

  “Don’t like my brew?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I,” Lathrop said. “But it’s all we’ve got and I have to drive awhile longer.”

  Ricci didn’t respond. He pressed the button to shut his window, put the lid back in place on the thermos, and glanced at the fuel gauge. The needle had fallen to just above the eighth-of-a-tank mark.

  “We’re low on gas,” he said.

  “I know.”

  Ricci motioned toward the road sign. It had a generic pump symbol below it.

  “We should probably fill up,” he said.

  Lathrop shook his head.

  “Not in Amaranto,” he said. “Unless you want to find trouble.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  “The sort with eyes and ears connected to the Quiros family,” Lathrop said.

  Ricci grunted.

  “Makes sense why you’re riding heavy on the brakes,” he said.

  Lathrop gave him a small nod.

  “I don’t want to get stopped by any badges,” he said. “They’re the ones with the high-speed connections.”

  Ricci thought a moment. “How much farther to that ranch?”

  “I told you, a while,” Lathrop said. “About five minutes after we pass the town exit, there’ll be an unmarked turnoff on the right. We’ll have to take it north for fifteen, twenty miles through a whole lot of nothing.”

  Ricci leaned back, returned his eye to the fuel gauge.

  “We’re cutting it close,” he said.

  Lathrop shrugged, his hands on the wheel.

  “Salvetti’s expecting us,” he said. “He’ll be ready with whatever we need.”

  * * *

  The turnoff led to a narrow, undivided road that ran away from the shoulders of the hills in meandering curves. Soon the ridges had almost disappeared behind them in the incessant flood of sunlight, and the surrounding landscape leveled into plains stubbled with more sagebrush, creosote shrubs, and, increasingly, widespread mats of those hardy grasses that somehow manage to thrive across the alkaline flats.

  As they went on, the paved road became cracked and rutted from lack of maintenance and, with several bumps that seemed a final, rattling protest against this gradual but complete deterioration, surrendered to a hard dirt track that actually proved smoother by contrast. Looking out his window, Ricci saw brown- and white-fleeced goats grazing at the patches of grass in loosely defined groups, and then a weathered old barn with a couple of workhorses outside in a corral and chickens penned near some big, lounging mixed-breed watchdogs.

  They rode for another three-quarters of a mile or so. Then Ricci spotted a vehicle up ahead in the glaring sun, a red open pickup truck. He could tell at once it wasn’t moving and, as they got closer, realized it had been pulled across the track to block their advance.

  Lathrop nosed the Dodge to withi
n a few yards of the truck, stopped, cut the engine, and waited. The pickup’s driver was its sole occupant, and a minute later he got out and approached the car. A solid, broad-shouldered man of about fifty with thick, neatly cut waves of salt-and-pepper hair, dark brown eyes, and a clean-shaven face with a firm, squarish chin, he wore a white T-shirt, dungarees, and cowboy boots.

  Lathrop turned to Ricci.

  “He’s going to want to put a name on you,” he said. “Any preferences?”

  “Yeah,” Ricci said. “Mine.”

  Lathrop shrugged and brought down his window as the man came around his side of the car, tugging a work glove off his right hand.

  “Lathrop,” he said, and leaned over toward the window. “Been a long time.”

  Lathrop nodded.

  “Don’t know how you always manage to look the same.”

  “That’s for me to know, and you to find out.”

  “Sooner or later,” Lathrop said, “I will.”

  The pickup driver grinned, reached his gloveless hand through the window, and gave Lathrop’s shoulder a masculine squeeze, his eyes going to Ricci’s face at the same time.

  “Al Salvetti, Tom Ricci,” Lathrop said. “Ricci, Al.”

  Salvetti took his hand off Lathrop’s shoulder and stretched it over the back of his seat. He grasped Ricci’s and shook it, holding his gaze on him a few seconds longer.

  “Good to meet you,” he said, then shifted his attention back to Lathrop. “I’ll turn my truck around and you can follow me up to the house. Got some food in the fridge, and everything ready for working out the details of the flight.”

  Lathrop looked at him.

  “We’re on fumes,” he said. “That old service station off the main road closed down and I wanted to steer clear of those sons of bitches in Amaranto.”

  “Can’t blame you,” Salvetti said. “Hang on, I’ll bring a jerrican from the truck, put some gas in your tank to be on the safe side.”

  Salvetti turned and started back toward the pickup.

  “Doesn’t look like some boondocks rancher,” Ricci said, watching him. “Or sound like one.”

  Lathrop faced him but didn’t say anything.