"Fuck," Wilder said as he saw the dot turn left into the Wildlife Refuge. Who was Finnegan meeting? He pulled the Jeep over to the narrow strip of grass on the side of the road. It was getting dark now, night falling fast. He twisted in the seat and spun the combination on the lock securing the footlocker in the back of the Jeep, then reached in and pulled out a set of night-vision goggles. He put the NVGs on his head, but kept them resting on his forehead, not covering his eyes. Not yet.

He watched the small screen and saw Finnegan's dot come to a halt. Looking at the terrain features on the map, Wilder realized Finnegan was in the exact same spot where he and Lucy had met him earlier in the day. He smiled grimly. First mistake. Violating one of Rogers' Rules of Rangering, formulated in 1759: Don't ever go back over the same trail.

Wilder pulled back onto the road and headed south. Checking the GPS one last time, he pulled the goggles down over his eyes when he was about a half mile from the exit gate and turned them on at the same time he turned off the headlights of the Jeep.

His world went green as the device amplified the ambient light. He drove to the exit gate at moderate speed. It was shut. Wilder went slightly past it, then pulled to the other side of the road. He parked the Jeep, grabbed the MP-5, and got out. Looking left and right, he didn't see the glow of oncoming headlights. He loped across the road, hopped the metal bar, and continued down the gravel road at a steady jog for a bit. Then he lay down on his stomach, peering to the south. The grove trees where Finnegan was hidden was directly across the swamp from him.

According to Rogers' Rules of Rangering, coming up on the site along the road was not a good idea. Wilder gave a small sigh, knowing he could not disappoint the long-departed Rogers, then slithered down the embankment into the black water. The cool water penetrated his clothes and he shivered. He untied the camouflage scarf that he had used to blindfold Lucy from around his neck-he was never going to look at that scarf the same way again-and dipped it in the water, then draped it over his head. It would diffuse the apparent outline of his head, a trick he'd learned from the Navy SEALs. Wilder moved forward, keeping his head and the goggles and the MP-5 above the water's surface as he pressed forward, watching everything through the open mesh of the scarf.

Tyler could see through his thermal scope that the Irishman's two security people, the ones he thought of as Football Player and Weight Lifter, were in the exact same places they had been for the afternoon meeting. Obviously they had never had a gunnery sergeant screaming at them for months on end that you never, never, never, occupied the same position twice. Never. The Corps had been big on repetition.

Weight Lifter was just inside the bar gate giving access to the refuge. He had it open, and if he followed form, he would shut it when the Irishman's visitor arrived. Football Player was forty feet down the road from the Irishman's position, sitting uncomfortably- based on his constant shifting-in a clump of palmetto bushes with a submachine gun across his knees. The Irishman was sitting on the front hood of his car. All three of them were waiting for a meeting that wasn't going to happen. Well, not with who they wanted to meet or in a way that was going to make any of them very happy.

Tyler reconsidered that as he centered the thermal sight on Weight Lifter's head. The man seemed uncomfortable and Tyler wanted to help with that.

Tyler breathed out very slowly and, when his lungs were empty, waited for that pause between heartbeats and the blood surge in his veins. He pulled the trigger back, a lover's caress, and the subsonic round raced down the barrel, out the suppressor, and hit Weight Lifter in the head less than a second later.

Two heartbeats after his first shot, he fired the second. Football Player's head slammed forward, chin bouncing off his chest, and then hung limply.

Time to get up close and personal.

Tyler put the rifle down and went into the water, sliding down his night-vision goggles as he headed toward the Irishman.

"So what's up?" Gloom said when he met Lucy on the bridge, keeping an eye out for traffic as the wind picked up.

"The jig," Lucy said.

"What jig?" Pepper said, and they both looked down at the little girl, shielded from the wind by Lucy's body, decked out in newly laundered WonderWear topped with a white cardigan and her jeans, plus LaFavre's mirrored sunglasses.

"It means we're almost finished,' Lucy said, looking down at her double reflection. Then she looked at Gloom, dropping her voice so that Pepper couldn't hear. "Tonight, Nash is going to take the helicopter during the stunt and go pick up an Irish crook who is going to meet a Russian mobster to give him fifty million dollars worth of Pre-Columbian porn."

Gloom was silent for a moment and then he said, "Okay."

"The theory is that no one will get hurt since the last thing they want is cops on takeoff."

"It's a theory," Gloom said.

"But I don't like it, so I want as many people off this bridge as possible." Lucy nodded down the almost deserted span. "We don't need to actually film it, so we don't need makeup, we don't need sound. Just enough so that to the uneducated eye, it looks like we're filming a movie."

"Okay," Gloom said.

"How many people is that?"

Gloom thought about it. "The lighting guys can set up the lights and go back to base camp. We'll put the camera on a truck bed. I'll handle the camera and the clapper. You direct."

"What about me?" Pepper said. "Aunt Lucy needs me to bring apples and water."

"Thank you very much," Lucy said. "But tonight, there's no eating on the set. Not during stunts. It's too dangerous."

"Okay," Pepper said, looking unconvinced.

"And I suppose we need stunt crew," Gloom said.

"Count on it," Lucy said. "Nash, Doc, Karen, they're all in-"

"Hey, look," Pepper said, peering around Lucy's legs.

"Evenin', ma'am," somebody said from behind her, and she turned to see LaFavre, tipping his hat to her.

"Major LaFavre," she said, not sure what the hell he was doing there.

"They said down in base camp that y'all were up here," he said, and then he looked down to where Pepper was tugging on his pants leg.

"Thank you for my sunglasses," she said. "They're very cool."

"You look quite fetching in them, my dear," he said to her and then smiled at Lucy, but his voice was level and serious, not flirting at all. "You wouldn't happen to know where my buddy J. T. Wilder is now, would you?"

"Not exactly," Lucy said, feeling a flare of alarm. "He was going to meet someone."

"He appears to be concerned for your safety," LaFavre said.

"I'm concerned for my safety, too." Lucy relaxed a little. "Hell, I'm concerned for everybody's safety."

LaFavre looked down again at Pepper, who was yanking on his pants leg again.

"I cannot see," she said, hemmed in by six adult legs.

LaFavre reached down and picked her up effortlessly and set her on his shoulders.

"Cool," she said and wrapped her arms around his head, knocking his pilot's cap askew.

"Is this where the trouble's going to be?" LaFavre said, squinting up at the bridge.

"That's our guess." Lucy took a deep breath. "They're going to bring a helicopter in with a cargo net…" She stopped when he shook his head, making Pepper giggle.

"Too much wind. Damn near impossible to do it in no wind. With this…" He shook his head again. "Never gonna happen."

"Then where?" Lucy looked around. "We're shooting here. This is where they wanted it set up. This bridge, right here."

"I don't know." LaFavre looked around again. "Hard place to get off of. Block both ends, you got yourself a trap. Only way off is up in chopper-which I doubt your stunt pilot can do-or over the rail with a rope."