But what did you expect to hear over the hobnailed beating of your own heart? a voice chided him.

Hurry, he commanded himself. Cate is alone. And then, more frighteningly: You could be wrong. Tatiana may know another way into the house.

Groping the wall, he set out, holding the gun in front of him as he would have a flashlight. He calculated that twenty paces would take him to the storm cellar. Water dripped from the ceiling. Instinctively, he lowered his head. Something damp and sticky danced across his face. Grimacing, he swiped it away.

Ten paces.

"Jett! Come here! Now!"

Gavallan spun his head in the direction of her voice. He retreated a step. It was the driver. He'd gotten bored and was mounting his own lonely charge. Just then, the door to the storm cellar opened and sunshine flooded the passage. Gavallan froze, squinting to adjust to the light. A black cowboy boot landed on the stairs forty feet in front of him.

"Jett!" Cate's voice came again.

Gavallan slid backward, his head turning one way, then the other. On the stairwell, the boots became blue jeans, and the blue jeans were joined by a pale hand holding the pearl-handled.357 Magnum. Gavallan dug his feet into the dirt floor. There was no going back. Bringing his left hand up to the grip of the.44 automag, he assumed the Stableford stance: left foot forward, right arm extended, left hand supporting his shooting wrist. He waited until he saw her face- the diamond blue eyes, the pouting lips. "Stop," he yelled.

Tatiana's only reaction was to raise the gun as quickly as she could. Gavallan hesitated, but only for a fraction of a second.

Then he fired three times.

He found Cate standing in the center of the front room.

"I killed him," she said.

"So I see." The driver had, after all, decided to mount a charge- a very ill-advised one. His body lay twisted and prone a few feet from the Suburban. "Good shot."

Cate shrugged, laying the Uzi on the table with a professional's ease.

"Sure you never fired one of those before?" he asked.

"I never said that."

"I just assumed…"

Cate gave a crisp shake of the head. "Don't assume too much. Remember, you didn't even know my real name until yesterday."

Gavallan knew she meant it as a joke, but he could not laugh. He was upset, jittery, waiting for the adrenaline to run down, for the electric colors to fade. "Come on. There's someone here who's very anxious to see us."

"Oh, Jesus, I almost for-" Cate bolted out the door, jumping off the porch and making toward the shed. "Graf!" she called. "We're coming, Graf!"

58

Mind explaining this?"

Gavallan rested on a knee next to Grafton Byrnes, fingering the frayed bullet hole in his friend's jacket.

Pale, unshaven, dark circles denting his eyes, Byrnes sat on the bare earth outside the shed, legs spread, sipping from a cup of water. His lower lip was cracked and swollen. A minute earlier, he'd smiled to show Cate and Gavallan the incisor he'd lost after he'd been recaptured the night before and returned to the camp.

"All you need to know is I wasn't wearing it when it happened," he said.

"I hope the guy that was got what he deserved."

Byrnes looked away, his voice as distant as his gaze. "Oh yeah."

"All right then," said Gavallan, seeking to rouse the fighting spirit in Byrnes. He knew their freedom was an illusion, a temporary gift that might be yanked away at any time. It was a long trek to the border and he needed Byrnes at his side, not lagging behind.

Gavallan's eyes kept coming back to his friend's hands. The bandages covering his thumbs were torn, the gauze stained black with dirt and blood. His palms were colored rust, dried blood tattooing the flesh. "You okay, pard?"

Byrnes caught his glance. "Six months," he said, raising his right hand, turning it over in the sunlight. "That's how long I've heard nails take to grow back. Tell you one thing. I'm not ever getting another fucking manicure in my life."

"Amen to that," said Gavallan, patting him on the shoulder. He knew he could never appreciate the barbarity his friend had suffered. A glance at the bandages, at the wounded eyes, told him enough.

A breeze came up, rustling the trees, scattering pine needles across the dirt, and freighting the air with the scent of turned earth, loam, and, somewhere distant, burning leaves. It was a melancholy scent, and Gavallan was overcome with sorrow and sadness and a sense of failed responsibility.

"You ready?" he asked, getting to his feet. "Time to saddle up."

"I thought you'd never ask."

Byrnes stood shakily, throwing an arm to Gavallan's shoulder for support. He took a few steps toward the clearing to better see the shot-up cabin, the bullet-riddled Suburban, the corpses sprawled pell-mell in the dirt. He stopped. Turning, he fixed Gavallan with a stunned, disquieted gaze, almost as if looking through him. Then he rushed forward and wrapped his arms around his friend, hugging him tightly. "Thank you," he said, pushing his cheek into Gavallan's hair, and Gavallan knew he was crying. "Thank you for coming to get me."

Gavallan returned the hug. He tried to say, "Anytime- that's what brothers do for each other," but something was blocking his throat and he couldn't trust himself to speak.

The second Suburban had survived the shoot-out intact. Not a dent in its black armor, nor a streak of dirt marring the high-gloss finish. Gavallan and Byrnes walked toward it, Cate following a step behind.

"Why didn't you just cancel the deal after I left you the message?" Byrnes asked.

"What message was that?"

"About the network operations center."

"It's a wreck. We know that. Just like the Private Eye-PO said."

"No," protested Byrnes, stopping short, waiting for Cate and Gavallan to face him. "It's not a wreck at all. On the contrary. That's what I called to tell you. It's a state-of-the-art facility. The NOC is Kirov's beard. Don't you see? It's his disguise. It's what fooled us."

"Fooled us?" asked Gavallan. "How?"

Byrnes described the vast room filled with row upon row of personal computers logging on and off Red Star, Mercury's wholly owned and operated Internet portal. "There were a thousand in there, maybe two thousand. I couldn't count them all. Each logs onto Red Star, then visits a site or two- Amazon, Expedia, the high-traffic sites. Some make a purchase, then they log off. A minute later, they dial Red Star back up again. Over and over, ad infinitum. All running off some master program."

"Metrics," explained Cate, pushing a comma of hair off her forehead. "Has to be."

"I was thinking the same thing," said Byrnes.

"You knew?" Gavallan demanded.

"God, no. But it makes sense. I just wrote about the same kind of shenanigans for the paper. You know… how websites use metrics to manipulate the tally of monthly visitors. It's a gag to fool the firms that measure Red Star's traffic. Make them think Mercury has more customers than it really does. Jett, when you were doing your due diligence on Mercury, didn't you talk to a metrics firm to validate Kirov's claims about Red Star's size?"

"Jupiter in San Jose. Their report tallied perfectly with Mercury's figures. Two hundred thousand subscribers in Moscow alone."

"Of course it did," said Cate. "He knew Jupiter or someone like them would be called in to check how many hits Red Star got every day. He couldn't risk there being a discrepancy. He needed two hundred thousand subscribers to justify his sky-high revenues, and two hundred thousand he got. Only his customers weren't customers at all. They were straw men, or maybe I should say 'straw machines.' " Cate took a breath. "Don't you see? It's a twenty-first-century Potemkin village."