I was fifteen yards from the bridge when Maggie gave him away. They had radios, handsets, and his had been clipped to his belt. She beeped him. I heard the beep, high and electronic, as distinct in the woods as a raven call would be in a computer lab. It came from the near bank of the ravine, over the lip. Was he still with the radio, or had he dumped it? There was no second beep, and I crouched, watching, ears straining.

LuEllen broke the impasse when she came down the hill over my old position. She touched a tree, or stepped on some brush, and Ratface heard it and moved. He was hurt, all right. His face was covered with blood, one leg was apparently twisted at the knee, but he still had the gun. He dragged himself up beside the roadbed opposite my ambush site. I waited until he was fully in the open and brought the Ml6 down on him. At the last second he apparently sensed me behind him, because he twisted and threw out a hand and, like Dace, said, "Wait." I unloaded the Ml6 into his side and back. He was dead before the bullets stopped shuddering through him.

"LuEllen!" I shouted across the road. "Two down."

"Are there more?"

"I don't think so. I didn't see a backup."

"Maggie."

LuEllen started running along the hill parallel to the road, an awkward galumphing in the camouflage suit. I followed on my side. We came through the bend and saw Maggie running back toward her car.

"Shoot her," LuEllen screamed.

I dropped to one knee and put the scope on her back. She ran so well. I watched as she took five steps, ten, long, lithe strides like a college runner.

"Shoot," LuEllen screamed again.

"Ah, shit," I said, and took the gun down.

LuEllen looked at me, looked at Maggie, close to her car now, put up her MAC-10, and sprayed out the whole clip. A MAC-10's effective range must be about thirty yards; she was shooting at more than two hundred. I saw one slug hit the dirt road perhaps fifty yards behind Maggie. The rest must have gone into the woods or the hillside. Maggie got back to the car, climbed in, and cranked it around in a circle. She stopped abruptly, a bag flew out of the window, and she was gone.

Gravedigging is brutal work.

With Maggie gone, I ran back to the bridge, dragged both bodies into the brush above the ravine, and scuffed dirt over the bloodstains, while LuEllen picked up the brass from the M16. If a car came down the road-an unlikely occurrence-nothing would be visible. That done, LuEllen and I climbed the hillside together, all the way to the top, toward the lower end of the road. Once over the ridgeline, we doubled back toward the top end. We found a good clump of trees above the road and crawled into it and lay there for three hours, and never a thing moved. Later on, we walked back down the road and looked at the bundle Maggie had thrown out of the window. It was the rest of the money.

"Maybe she wanted to deal," LuEllen said doubtfully.

"If she had to. If we'd come up with something she couldn't fight," I said.

"We did, I guess," said LuEllen. We looked at the money for a while, glumly shuffled through it, and carried it back to the cabin.

"Let's get the shovel," I said finally.

We buried Ratface and his large friend a hundred feet up the hill, in a small natural hollow where I could work out of sight. LuEllen sat on the hill above me with the MAC-10. I first cut out the clumps of sod and put them to one side and then threw the dirt on a tarp. I dug for two hours in the yellow, sandy soil before I was both satisfied and too tired to dig anymore.

Getting bodies up the hill was as bad as the digging. I checked their pockets, found car keys and wallets, kept the keys but left the wallets with the bodies. I dragged Ratface up the hill by his coat, but the big man was too heavy, so I tied three loops of rope around his waist to use as a handle. Their heads and hands rolled loosely and their skin was as white as candle wax. When I dropped them in the grave, they made an untidy and unholy pile. I tossed the M16 and both of their guns in on top of them.

It took another half hour to get the dirt in, and the sod tramped into place.

"Should we say a prayer?" LuEllen asked as I fitted the last of the sod back in place.

I said nothing and finally she said, "Ah, fuck it."

There was some extra dirt left on the tarp, and I dragged it down to the ravine and dumped it in the creek. LuEllen loaded the car and shut down the cabin. I found her wiping the table, the stove, and the woodwork.

"I hope it doesn't come to that," I said.

"Remember what Maggie said? Why take a chance?"

We left the cabin, going out the back way, at seven o'clock. The red Buick was parked near the intersection of the all-weather road. I checked the front seat and trunk as LuEllen waited, and found a box with fourteen thousand dollars in it. I took the money and drove the car out to the main highway, with LuEllen following. We eventually left it at a turnoff by a historical marker, fifteen miles from the cabin. I wiped it down before we left it.

"Now what?" LuEllen asked.

"We got their shooters. They might have more, but they'll be cautious. And now Maggie knows that we know, so there'll be no more bullshit."

"Is that good?"

"Maybe. I've got a couple of ideas. I've got to get on the terminal and talk to Bobby. You ought to get out of here. Back to Duluth. It'll all be computer stuff from here on. If we travel together, we'd just be easier to spot."

"You think they could spot us? They're not the cops, they're just a bunch of hoods."

"Yeah. But like Maggie said, why take a chance?"

"You're right," she said after a while. "But I'm not going back to Duluth."

"Where?"

"Mexico. Right where we were going. I'm all packed." And she started to cry.

We drove north through Cumberland across into Pennsylvania and arrived outside of Pittsburgh in the early morning hours, running, in the end, on pure adrenaline. We slept late, and in the evening I put her on a plane to San Diego.

"Take care of yourself, Kidd." LuEllen kissed me on the cheek and went through the gate. Unlike Maggie, she never looked back.

What?

Need long talk.

Call 3 a.m.

Early the next morning I laid out a program for Bobby.

Big bux.

Yes.

Need 2 more hacks.

OK.

10K each for hacks.

OK.

25K for me. Cash. Pay when we win.

I pay out front. If we lose, I might not be able to pay. Give PO Box.

Leave terminal on answer.

I woke at midmorning to the terminal alarm and a squirt of data-a post office box in Memphis where I could send the money and registered mail, and also the names of the other two hacks. They were both from California. Bobby called them Cal Tech and Stanford. I couldn't remember either one, but Bobby said that Stanford met me on a Vegas gaming board a few years before. Bobby said he would begin checking Anshiser phone lines for incoming data.

Anshiser company/house show no incoming data lines. Must have private exchanges. Major pain.

Yes.

Most computers are hooked into the local telephone exchange. In simpler days, the data-line numbers were often variants of the telephone number of the company that owned the computers. If the company's number was 555-1115, the computer number might be 555-1116.

Hackers got onto that right away. Whole nights were spent exploring the guts of various expensive on-line computers. A generation of computer fanatics learned their jobs by doing it. The first illegal entry I made, way back in the early seventies, was to a call-in board that regulated the heating, cooling, water, and other systems of one of the biggest office buildings in Minneapolis. I could have turned off the building's heat in the middle of a January night, but I didn't. I left a note for the operator, though, and the next time I called, entry was more difficult.