He was glad that he'd hidden the bug truck in the thicket where it couldn't be seen from the air. Removing the silencer, the Dodger slipped the Beretta back in its holster, paused only briefly at the hut, and then walked quickly back to the truck.

Kurtz watched and noted everything as the Huey hauled them the short mile to the mansion. He and Rigby were unhurt—except for the cutting pressure of the flexcuffs—and surrounded by the four men whom he believed to be Vietnamese or Vietnamese-Americans. There was only one pilot—a Texan judging from his accent when he told everyone to hang on for take-off—and he said nothing for the rest of the flight.

The train tracks came to within a hundred yards of the mansion and then looped in a turnaround. The Cloud Nine kid-sized locomotive and cars were just visible in a long storage shed that straddled the tracks. Evidently the Major had kept the train and tracks maintained all these years.

The Huey landed and the four men half-pushed, half-dragged Rigby and Kurtz out of the open doors. All four were dressed in jeans and field jackets. Two of them carried M-16s that Kurtz was certain were illegally rigged for full auto; the other two carried even more formidable military firepower—M-60 machine guns.

Where are the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms pukes in their windbreakers when you need them? thought Kurtz. The man behind him shoved him through doors that a fifth Vietnamese man, this one from inside the house and dressed in a blue blazer, opened for them.

This butler or whatever he was led them through a foyer, down a hallway, through a library, and out onto the rear terrace on the cliff's edge. Kurtz had noted every side room and everything else he could see during their short transit through the house, and he knew that Rigby was doing the same. The fact that they hadn't been blindfolded bothered him a bit, since the simplest explanation for that was that they planned to kill both him and Rigby.

The house was large—three stories tall, comprising at least five thousand square feet inside—and it looked as if it had been built in the 1970s, around the time of the Major's retirement to Neola. It was built to fight off Indians. The first story and a half were stone—not only faced with stone, but built of stone. The windows to the rear of the house, nearest the helipad, were all leaded glass, but the leaded parts were actually bars. Thinner, taller windows to either side of the main ones were too narrow to scramble through but would offer perfect firing positions. A five-car garage ran to the north of the house along the same circular driveway, but all five of the wooden doors were down. The house doors they'd come through—the house was situated so that its fancier front was facing the bluff rather than the heliport and driveway—were a thick hardwood reinforced by steel. Enough to stop a Kiowa war lance, that was for sure.

This side of the house facing the cliff was less defensible. The library opened onto the terrace through wide French doors that let in the view and afternoon light to the west. Off the library had been an adjoining bedroom—Kurtz only caught a glimpse but thought it was probably the Major's bedroom, adapted from a huge parlor on the first floor, because of pill bottles and military photos on the burgundy wallpapered walls—and that bedroom also had wide doors opening onto the terrace. Kurtz guessed from oversized drape boxes above the doors that there were steel shutters that could drop down if necessary.

The Major, Colonel Vin Trinh, and three other men were waiting on the terrace. One man wore sheriff's gray, a Colt.45 in a western holster, and a name tag that said "Gerey" — the name of the sheriff that Rigby had talked to little more man an hour earlier; the other two men were younger, white, muscled, and also armed.

That's seven bodyguards so far, counting the servant in the blazer and not counting the chopper pilot and the sheriff, thought Kurtz as he and Rigby were shoved into the sunlight in front of the man in the wheelchair, which was in the shade of a striped canvas awning. And Truth, the Major, and this other old guy.

"Mr. Kurtz, Miss King," said the Major. "How nice of you to drop in."

Ah, Jesus, thought Kurtz. This old fart gets his material from villains in B movies.

"I'm a police officer," said Rigby. It was the first full sentence she'd completed since Kurtz had been sitting on the grass with her.

"Yes, Miss King… Detective King," said the Major. "We know who you are."

"Then you know what a bad idea this is," said Rigby, her voice low but solid. "Get these cuffs off us this minute and we'll let it slide for now. We were trespassing."

The Major smiled again, shook his head almost sadly, and turned toward Kurtz. "I think it was very clever of your masters to send the policewoman along, Mr. Kurtz. If circumstances were different, it might… might… have been a disincentive to what has to happen next."

Aw, shit, thought Kurtz. He said, "What masters?" The Major's smile disappeared. "Don't insult my intelligence, Mr. Kurtz. It makes perfect sense that they sent you—with your policewoman chippie here as an escort From what we can glean, you're one of the few people that both the Gonzaga and Farino families do business with."

"Chippie?" said Rigby. She sounded more amused than insulted.

Colonel Vin Trinh stepped forward and slapped Rigby hard across the mouth. He wiped the blood from his knuckles with a silk handkerchief, took Kurtz's holstered.38 from one of the Vietnamese men, and held his arm at full length, the muzzle inches from Rigby's temple. Kurtz was reminded of a famous photo from the Vietnam era, taken during the Tet Offensive he thought, where a Saigon chief of police had summarily executed a Viet Cong suspect in the street.

Trinh cocked the pistol. "If you say one more word without being told to," he said in almost unaccented English, "I will kill you now."

Rigby looked at the tall man.

"What do you want?" Kurtz said to the Major.

The old man in the wheelchair sighed. The bodyguard in the blazer had moved behind the chair, hands on its grips, obviously ready to move the crippled man back deeper into the shade should the sun encroach or Kurtz or Rigby make any sudden move. Or to get him out of the path of any arterial sprays, thought Kurtz.

"We want the obvious, Mr. Kurtz," said the Major. "We want an end to this war. Isn't that what your masters sent you down here to discuss?"

War? thought Kurtz. According to both Toma Gonzaga and Angelina Farino Ferrara, they didn't have a clue as to who was killing their junkies. They certainly had never talked about fighting back—about any war. Was all that ignorance a ruse to get Kurtz involved? It didn't make much sense.

He said nothing.

"Did they send you with terms?" asked the Major. "Or shall we propose our own?"

Colonel Vin Trinh's arm was still rigid, the hammer on Kurtz's.38 was still cocked. The muzzle ten inches from Rigby's head did not waver by so much as a millimeter.

Kurtz said nothing.

"For instance, what would it be worth to you for us to spare Miss King's life?" said the old man.

Kurtz remained silent.

"She means nothing to you?" said the Major. "But you were fellow orphans together as children. You were in the army together. Surely that must have created some bond, Mr. Kurtz."

Kurtz smiled. "If you've got my military records," he said, "look at them more carefully. This bitch is one of the reasons I was court-martialed."

Major Michael O'Toole nodded. "Yes, that fact is in your records. But you were not, as it turned out, dishonorably discharged, Sergeant Kurtz. The charges appeared to have been dropped. Perhaps you and she have… made up?" He showed hard white teeth.