“Let’s go, asshole,” he whispered.

I stayed five feet behind him and walked on the opposite side of the driveway, like an infantryman would. I had to be convincing, like I was worried about presenting a grouped target. I knew the place was going to be empty, but he didn’t.

We walked on around a bend and saw the house in front of us. There was a light burning in a window. On a security timer, probably. Duke slowed and stopped.

“See a door?” he whispered.

I peered into the gloom. Saw a small porch. Pointed at it.

“You wait at the entrance,” I whispered back. “I’ll check the lighted window.”

He was happy enough to agree to that. We made it to the porch. He stopped there and waited and I peeled off and looped around toward the window. Dropped to the ground and crawled the last ten feet in the dirt. Raised my head at the sill and peered inside. There was a low-wattage bulb burning in a table lamp with a yellow plastic shade. There were battered sofas and armchairs. Cold ash from an old fire in the hearth. Pine paneling on the walls. No people.

I crawled backward until the light spill let Duke see me and held two forked fingers below my eyes. Standard sniper-spotter visual code for I see. Then I held my hand palm out, all my fingers extended. I see five people. Then I went into a complicated series of gestures that might have indicated their disposition and their weaponry. I knew Duke wouldn’t understand them. I didn’t understand them either. As far as I knew they were entirely meaningless. I had never been a sniper-spotter. But the whole thing looked real good. It looked professional and clandestine and urgent.

I crawled back ten more feet and then stood up and walked quietly back to join him at the door.

“They’re out of it,” I whispered. “Drunk or stoned. We get a good jump, we’ll be home and dry.”

“Weapons?”

“Plenty, but nothing within reach.” I pointed at the porch. “Looks like there’s going to be a short hallway on the other side. Outer door, inner door, then the hallway. You take left, I’ll take right. We’ll wait there in the hallway. Take them down when they come out of the room to see what the noise is all about.”

“You giving the orders now?”

“I did the recon.”

“Just don’t screw up, asshole.”

“You either.”

“I never do,” he said.

“OK,” I said.

“I mean it,” he said. “You get in my way, I’ll be more than happy to put you down with the rest of them, no hesitation.”

“We’re on the same side here.”

“Are we?” he said. “I think we’re about to find out.”

“Relax,” I said.

He paused. Tensed. Nodded in the dark. “I’ll hit the outer door, you hit the inner. Like leapfrog.”

“OK,” I said again. I turned away and smiled. Just like a veteran cop. If I hit the inner door, he would leapfrog through it first and I would go second, and the second guy is the guy who usually gets shot, given normal reaction times from the enemy.

“Safeties off,” I whispered.

I clicked the H amp;K to single-round fire and he clicked the catch on his Steyr to the right. I nodded and he nodded and kicked in the outer door. I was right there on his shoulder and slid past him and kicked in the inner door without breaking stride. He slid past me and jumped left and I followed him and went right. He was good enough. We made a pretty good team. We were crouched in perfect position even before the shattered doors had stopped swinging on their hinges. He was staring ahead at the entry to the room in front of us. He had the Steyr in a fixed two-handed grip, arms straight out, eyes wide open. He was breathing hard. Almost panting. Getting himself through a long moment of danger, the best way he could. I pulled Angel Doll’s PSM out of my pocket. Held it left-handed and snicked the safety off and scrambled across the floor and jammed it in his ear.

“Keep very quiet,” I said to him. “And make a choice. I’m going to ask you one question. Just one. If you lie, or if you refuse to answer, I’m going to shoot you in the head. You understand?”

He held perfectly still, five seconds, six, eight, ten. Stared desperately at the door in front of him.

“Don’t worry, asshole,” I said. “There’s nobody here. They were all arrested last week. By the government.”

He was motionless.

“You understand what I said before? About the question?”

He nodded, hesitantly, awkwardly, with the gun still jammed hard in his ear.

“You answer it, or I shoot you in the head. Got it?”

He nodded again.

“OK, here it comes,” I said. “You ready?”

He nodded, just once.

“Where is Teresa Daniel?” I asked.

There was a long pause. He turned half toward me. I tracked my hand around to keep the PSM’s muzzle in place. Realization dawned slowly in his eyes.

“In your dreams,” he said.

I shot him in the head. Just jerked the muzzle out of his ear and fired once left-handed into his right temple. The sound was shattering in the dark. Blood and brain and bone chips hit the far wall. The muzzle flash burned his hair. Then I fired a double-tap from the H amp;K right-handed into the ceiling and fired another from the PSM left-handed into the floor. Switched the H amp;K to automatic fire and stood up and emptied it point-blank into his body. Picked up his Steyr from where it had fallen and blasted the ceiling with it, again and again, fifteen fast shots, bam bam bam bam, half the magazine. The hallway was instantly full of bitter smoke and chips of wood and plaster were flying everywhere. I switched magazines on the H amp;K and sprayed the walls, all around. The noise was deafening. Spent shell cases were spitting out and bouncing around and raining down everywhere. The H amp;K clicked empty and I fired the rest of the PSM’s ammo into the hallway wall and kicked open the door to the lighted room and blew up the table lamp with the Steyr. I found a side table and tossed it through the window and used up the second spare magazine for the H amp;K by spraying the trees in the distance while I fired the Steyr left-handed into the floor until it clicked empty. Then I piled the Steyr and the H amp;K and the PSM together in my arms and ran for it with my head ringing like a bell. I had fired a hundred and twenty-eight rounds in about fifteen seconds. They had deafened me. They must have sounded like World War Three to Beck.

I ran straight down the driveway. I was coughing and trailing gunsmoke like a cloud. I headed for the cars. Beck had already scrambled across into the Cadillac’s driver’s seat. He saw me coming and opened his door an inch. Faster than using the window.

“Ambush,” I said. I was out of breath and I could hear my own voice loud inside my head. “There were at least eight of them.”

“Where’s Duke?”

“Dead. We got to go. Right now, Beck.”

He froze for a second. Then he moved.

“Take his car,” he said.

He already had the Cadillac rolling. He jammed his foot down and slammed his door and reversed down the driveway and out of sight. I jumped into the Lincoln. Fired it up. Stuck the selector in Reverse and got one elbow up on the back of the seat and stared through the rear window and hit the gas. We shot out backward onto the road one after the other and slewed around and took off again north, side by side like a stoplight drag race. We howled around the curves and fought the camber and stayed up around seventy miles an hour. Didn’t slow until we reached the turn that would take us back toward Hartford. Beck edged ahead of me and I fell in behind him and followed. He drove five fast miles and turned in at a closed package store and parked at the back of the lot. I parked ten feet from him and just lay back in the seat and let him come to me. I was too tired to get out. He ran around the Cadillac’s hood and pulled my door open.

“It was an ambush?” he said.