“Come on, sweetie. Time to play with the big boys.”

Pulling her by the arm, he was again amazed at how light she seemed. And compliant now, after the spirit she’d shown in Arizona. She seemed to be in another gravity or something; you could launch her in a direction, and she’d sail on out in that direction until she was stopped or bumped into something. God, if Bob the Nailer knew what Shreck had done to her. But Bob wouldn’t be knowing anything after a few hours.

“Okay,” he said. “All set.”

“Fine,” said Shreck. Shreck had his rifle out; it was a bland little Marlin lever gun with a scope. He had on his baseball cap and an expensive camouflage outfit and he looked for all the world like a prosperous hunter, in case they should run into forest rangers or park service personnel, though that was highly unlikely. They didn’t like to come into the forest on the first day of deer season unless they had to.

Shreck led. Though the vests were heavy and the ground was rough and they were climbing, it wasn’t hard and they pushed the woman along when she dragged behind. Eventually, the sky turned orange and the sun rose. It looked to be a clear day, with one of those high, piercing skies, sweet blue, the wind brisk and moist and pure.

First day of deer season, thought Payne. A good day for killing.

A shot rang out far away, a crisp rolling echo. Somebody had drawn blood. It was a good omen.

“All right,” said Bob. “Last chance for questions? Any questions? We did it all a hundred times yesterday. You forget it all yet?”

Dobbler and Memphis looked at him. Nick was grave, stiff, but determined; Bob saw that Marine look, that Donny Fenn look, that said, Hey, I don’t want to be here, but I don’t see anyone else. He’d be all right.

Dobbler was something else. He was on the edge of panic. Bob could see him lick his lips, stroke his chin, his eyes shifting nervously. This was all new to him. He was cherry. Would he hang tough or bug out? Bob didn’t know and he didn’t like the gamble. But he had to play with the cards he had.

“Dr. Dobbler?”

“No.”

“Memphis?”

“This is so chancy. I still – ”

“That it is. You have a better idea?”

“You should be on the rifle. Not – ”

“Don’t you worry, Nick.”

“Bob, you know what I did the last time.”

“I know what you’ll do this time.”

“The whole thing turns on my – ”

“You’re the man who found Annex B. You’re a goddamned FBI agent, one of the best. You can do it.”

“You’re the war hero, not me.”

“No such thing as a hero. You forget heroes, Nick. This is about doing the job and coming home. You do your job and you come home, I swear it.”

“But you – ”

“Don’t you worry about me. None of your business about me. I got what I signed up for. Okay?”

“Okay,” Nick said sullenly.

The doctor tried to say something, but the words caught in his throat.

“Hey, Doc,” said Bob, “in three tours in Vietnam, I’ve been in some scrapes. It’s okay to be scared shitless.”

Dobbler cracked a wretched smile.

“If Russell Isandhlwana could see me now!” he finally said.

“I don’t know who he is, but he’d crap in his pants, that I guarantee you,” said Bob.

He winked, actually happy, and they set off.

“Okay,” said Shreck. “1000 hours. Set, Payne?”

“Let’s do it, sir.”

“It’s going to be a long day. Fire the first flare.”

Payne lifted the flare pistol, pulled the trigger, felt the crispest pop, and watched as a red arc of intense light soared overhead, caught on its own parachute, then began to drift flutteringly to earth. In twenty seconds it was out; in thirty seconds it was down.

They walked to the little silk chute and the blackened, sulfurous husk of the burned-out illumination round.

“Leave a round there,” said Shreck. “A green one.”

Payne threw a brass flare round into the furls of the parachute.

“Now, we move to our next position. They’ve got a long hard climb to make this one, and we don’t have very far at all. In fact we should be able to watch them come.”

They pushed the woman along, and walked the crest of the ridge. It was easy moving, because the ground was clear and stony and the air bright. They covered a mile in fifteen minutes, then plunged downhill for a swift half mile. There, nestling in a grove, was a canoe that Payne had planted days ago. He righted it, plunged it into a stream, and the three climbed in. Propelled by Payne’s powerful strokes, they made three miles in the remaining time. Then, hiding the canoe, they came to another ridge. Payne bent into the underbrush, pulled out a lank rope, and yanked it tight so that it coiled and slithered under his tension, like an awakening snake. It extended halfway up the ridge to where it had been pinioned into the stone. At that point, Payne had dangled another rope from still higher on the ridge.

“All right, Mrs. Fenn. You just pull yourself up as you climb. You’ll find it’s much, much easier than climbing unsupported.”

At each stage, Payne coiled the rope and hid it.

When they reached the crest, none of them were even breathing hard.

“The telescope,” said Shreck. “They’ll be on the ridge soon enough.”

Payne pulled a case out of his pack and unlimbered a Redfield Regal VI spotting scope with a 20×-60× zoom lens, mounted it to its tripod and bent to its angled eyepiece, jacked the magnification up to maximum, and found a clear view of the ridge across the way.

“All set, Colonel Shreck.”

“Well, they’re late. This early in the game and they’re late. They’re losing it.”

“They had a long pull. They had four miles, over two ridge lines, with a stream to ford. They’d only just now be making it.”

Finally, with three minutes gone over the hour deadline, the green flare rose and floated down.

“All right, fire quickly. Don’t give them any time to rest.”

Payne fired a blue flare into the air and in the last moment of its arc, he saw a figure come straggling over the surface to take a fast compass reading.

Just barely made it, bubba, he thought.

A few minutes later three figures were visible on the crest line two miles away. Magnified sixty times, they were still ants, but recognizable ants.

And it became immediately obvious what the difficulty was.

It must have been Bob out front. He looked as if he could go for another ten years.

Too bad they don’t make a two-mile rifle, motherfucker, Payne thought. I’d have a snipe at you myself.

The middle one would be the younger guy, Memphis. He remembered Memphis. Memphis wore an FBI raid jacket, and its initials almost yielded their individual meanings before collapsing back into blaze-yellow blur. Memphis’s face was lost behind a mask of camouflage paint but his body language looked stolid and determined.

The problem was the third one.

Jesus, it was Dobbler. Face painted like a commando or not, he was still recognizable by his pansy body and that prissy lack of strength in his flapping limbs.

“It’s Dobbler!” Payne yelled. “Colonel Shreck, for Christ’s sakes, they brought Dobbler along and he don’t look happy.”

Dobbler had gone to his knees and his mouth was open – Payne imagined he could hear the ruckus even two miles away.

“I can see he’s yelling. Jesus, I can just hear him: ‘I can’t make it, I can’t go on, why did I ever do this,’ that kind of candy-ass shit.”

“Let me see,” said Shreck.

Payne moved to let Shreck at the scope.

“Swagger, you fool,” said Shreck, with a contemptuous snort as he watched. “You should have shot him.”

Eventually, they saw the other two get the abject figure to his feet.

“I wonder how long he’ll last,” said Shreck.

Payne would shoot Dobbler, just as he knew Shreck would. If you ain’t up to the field, you die. That was all. That was the rule. He himself had shot a captain once who’d fucked up so bad in an A-camp fight and was weeping piteously in the bunker. He’d bet Shreck had done it too.