His eyes were dilating, his ears sealing off, his breathing going softer. He was sliding into tunnel vision, where the concentration was so intense that all other cues in the world dropped away and respiration bled to a hum.

He pulled the rifle to him. No time now to think of it: he could not allow himself to be aware of the instrument because he had to be beyond the instrument. His will was the instrument.

Now he slid behind the scope, finding the spot-weld, where cheek and gun joined while his fingers discovered their place by slow degree. That was the secret; to make everything the same. Simplify, simplify. To make of oneself nothingness; to slide into the great numbness beyond want and hope; to simply be.

He was beyond computation. He knew the range, he knew the angle, he knew the wind, he knew the bullet’s trajectory and velocity, he knew its drop and how it would leak energy as it sped along. He had accounted for all this and he now engaged his target through the bright circle of the scope.

Even magnified, the man was a small, a very small object, hardly recognizable as human. Just a squirming dot. He watched the tremble in the reticle as he willed himself through minute subverbal corrections, not thinking so much as feeling. It was very, very close now.

Don’t blow it, he ordered himself. Not this time!

Nick breathed out a little. Lon Scott was just where Bob had said he would be, beneath the crest line where the osage had been crushed by an all-terrain vehicle as it delivered him. He was in a spider hole, only his painted face and the rifle barrel visible.

At a hundred yards, Shreck put up his hands.

“No guns,” he shouted. “No guns or the woman is dead. You got that?”

Each of the two men raised his hands, pirouetted slowly to show that he wore no visible weapons, then let his hands stay high.

“You got the cassette and Annex B?”

Bob raised the knapsack he was carrying.

“Right here,” he yelled back.

“Okay. You bring the stuff. When I authenticate it, we’ll release the girl. You see how we’ve got her? You make a funny move, you look funny, you do anything stupid, you get unlucky and trip, anything, anything, my friends, and she’s fucked. Payne’ll do it, you know he will. Only chance she’s got is our rules.”

“You’re calling the shots,” Bob said. “Now just take it easy with that damned shotgun, Payne.”

Slowly and warily, the two men approached, hands held high and stiff.

At last Shreck faced Bob the Nailer, big as life, who stood but six feet away and he looked him in the eyes. He looked as calm as a pond on a summer day.

“Hello, Colonel,” came a familiar voice.

Shreck looked to the other man, the young FBI agent. Only it wasn’t the young FBI agent, even though he wore a black FBI raid jacket and baseball cap and greenish paint on his face. It was Dr. Dobbler.

Shreck looked back to Bob, realized in a flash the game had changed. He pressed the button on a unit on his belt, sending a shriek of radio noise that would signal Scott to fire.

There came the sound, from far away, of a rifle shot.

The shrillness of the beep somewhat surprised Lon and he saw the cross hairs dance a tiny jig and come off Bob.

So soon? he thought.

He exhaled half a lungful of air and gently as a lover squeezed the reticle back onto Bob, center chest, and began to draw the slack from the trigger and-

Nick fired and in the split second the rifle jumped and the scope-picture blurred, he called it a hit. He looked back quickly in recovery. The bullet had struck Lon Scott in the head. It was the brain shot. Blood seemed to have been flung everywhere by the impact. Lon sagged back and slid into his spider hole. Only the rifle was left to show.

Nick, in his own spider hole in the vastness of Hard Bargain Valley, threw the bolt and tried to bring Bob’s Remington to bear on the party of five in the open. A sudden wave of weakness thundered over him.

Jesus, he thought, you just hit a thousand-yard shot!

He started to tremble.

The woman screamed, but Payne pulled her down, twisted her to brandish the shotgun, and didn’t panic.

Bob said to the colonel, “My boy just tagged your boy. You’re all alone.”

The colonel was calm. Maybe a half-smile played across his mouth. At some not so secret level he was a happy man.

“It doesn’t mean a thing, Swagger,” he said, thinking quickly. “Now let me tell you what’s going to happen. Nothing’s changed. Only thing we want now is out. We’re going on a nice slow walk out of here with the woman and with the cassette and the documents. You follow, she’s wasted. So don’t you try a goddamn thing. You put the gun down. You got that?”

“I’ll kill this fucking woman,” said Payne. “You know I will. I got the gun taped to her head. I swear, I’ll blow her away. Now you back off.”

Bob dropped the knapsack. Only his hand wasn’t empty. It held a Remington 1100 semiautomatic shotgun, cut down to pistol grip and sawed-off barrel.

Nick’s second mandate was Shreck. He disengaged the rifle from Lon’s spider hole and brought it to bear on the five figures five hundred yards to his left.

Goddamn!

He could only see the tops of heads. The action had come to play in one of the subtle folds in the earth that ran across the valley floor and his targets were beneath his line of vision.

Which one was Shreck?

He couldn’t tell.

Oh, Christ, Bob, he thought.

He looked around desperately, seeking a tree he could climb to get some elevation into the fold, but there was nothing. He put the rifle down, drew his Beretta, feeling helpless rage.

“Put the gun down,” said Payne. “I’ll blow her fuckin’ brains out.”

“He will, you know,” said the colonel.

So here we are, Bob thought. Come a long way for this party. Let’s see who’s got the stones for close work.

Bob leveled the short, mean semiautomatic shotgun at Payne. Payne could see the yawing bore peeping out from the forestock.

“He isn’t going to shoot,” said the colonel forcefully. “Payne, he’s bluffing, he doesn’t have a shot.”

“I’m not going to shoot,” said Bob. “Here’s the damn deal. I put the gun down, you cut the girl free. Everybody walks. Okay?”

Dobbler backed away nervously.

“Done,” said the colonel. “The smart move.”

“Okay,” said Bob. “I’m going to count to three, then I’m putting the gun down. Nobody get excited here.”

“Do it slow, Swagger,” said Payne.

“One,” said Bob, and then “Two,” and then he fired.

Payne was astounded that it happened like this, the crazy fucking fuck, the moron, he actually fired, and in the explosion he fired too, sending the woman to hell, fuck them all, fuck all who fucked with Jack Payne, soldier and killer of men.

And he felt the gun buck and knew the woman’s head was gone, except that it wasn’t, for she fell backwards somehow, screaming in terror but intact and he fired again, felt the impulse to squeeze run from his brain down through his arm to his finger, felt it squeeze, waited for the gun to go off.

Only then did he realize he was squeezing a phantom finger on a phantom hand.

Swagger had blown a charge of double-ought clean through his elbow from a range of two feet, literally severing it. The hand still grasped the shotgun bound in tape to her skull; it simply was no longer attached to him.

In horror, Payne held his stump high, and watched jets of bright blood pulse out into the clear fall air. In that second the incredible agony of it hit him.

“You fucker,” he screamed. “You fucker!”

Bob put the muzzle of the Remington against Payne’s stout little chest, and sent a deer slug through the Kevlar vest that tunneled to his spine. Payne disappeared as he collapsed.