Craig Pardee came through the backstage door. He came to the table where Blancanales — a.k.a. Pete Marchardo — waited. Pardee signaled for two beers before he sat down.

"My girl's got the stage jitters," he told Blancanales. "She don't usually sing country, but it's the only work she can get. They hired her 'cause she's got a Texas accent. This country-and-western fad, you know. Told her I'd take care of her, give her the high life while I did my business, but she says she's got to work. Got to advance her career. What a career, breaking her heart for tourists and niggers! She ought to go to Hollywood."

Blancanales took in the crowd around them.

"What's a Western saloon doing in Jamaica anyway?"

"It's a conspiracy. Prairie fairies of the world."

They laughed. Pardee raised his beer mug. "To you, Marchardo. And me. And all the soldiers like us. Right or wrong, we're real."

"There it is."

Pardee grinned. "And the marines!"

"What outfit were you in?" Blancanales asked.

"101st Airborne. Death From Above. Winged Victory." Pardee's grin suddenly became a sneer. "The PAVN couldn't stop us but a goddamned army of hippies and politicians did."

The backstage door opened again. A young blond woman in a black velvet pantsuit and ten-gallon hat carried a guitar to the stage. Pardee's sour look faded. He watched her admiringly as she adjusted the microphone, tuned her guitar. "God, she's so pretty," he said out loud.

While Pardee gazed at the girl on the stage, Blancanales studied Pardee. The man had a face scorched and creased by years of exposure. Squint lines marked the corners of his eyes. White sunburn scars splotched his high cheekbones. When Craig Pardee had sneered, Blancanales noticed a very limited mobility to the right side of his face. Now he saw why. A pattern of little scars crossed his face and disappeared into his short-cut hair.

Though Pardee stood six foot in street shoes, his muscles made him look squat. He wore a size nineteen collar. But despite his bulk, all his motions were fluid and precise. Pardee was a hard man. He was the image of the professional soldier.

Watching the girl now, however, he had the soft eyes and smile of a boy in love. Blancanales decided to drop it on Pardee: "Oh, yeah. I want to introduce you to some friends of mine. They're good guys. And they're looking for work."

Pardee turned to Blancanales, his face suddenly expressionless, his eyes dead, but the arteries and tendons in his throat stood from his weathered skin.

"What?"

"Slow, Pardee. Slow. I didn't break your security. They don't know what's going on. They don't even know your name. I told them nothing. I just said there's a chance for work, and that I'd vouch for them. That's it. You say no, they fly on to Miami. No problem."

"Who are they?"

"We just came off a run. One guy's like me, a shooter. Great with a rifle, better with a pistol. The other guy's into electronics. Radio, radar, high-tech stuff. But when there's trouble, he knows how to rock and roll."

"Drugs?"

"It was work. There's no war on, so..."

"I mean them. They into drugs?"

"I've lived with them for weeks at a time, on ships, in neighborhoods. I never saw them do anything except a little alcohol. Pardee, you don't know that business. Dopers don't last long in the dope trade."

"What's their background?"

"Nam. Some police trouble. The shooter says he's on the run. The electronics man is clean."

"So what's he doing running dope?"

"Making money." .

On the stage, the girl began her song. She accompanied herself with the guitar. Pardee turned away from Blancanales and watched her. He gently responded to the rhythm of the guitar chords as he sipped his beer, making it last. Blancanales waited.

The girl paused after her song and Pardee applauded. His clapping moved two or three other patrons to applaud. Blancanales joined in, but the applause was lost in the nonstop barroom noise. Pardee glared miserably at the tourists and phony cowfolk who were ignoring the girl. Then he demanded of Blancanales: "Who else will recommend them?"

"Ask Senor Meza. Ask the people we both know. But I can't give you any other names — security works both ways. I didn't give anybody your name, I can't give anybody's name to you. They'd think you were Federal. And then it would be all over for me. But anybody on the yacht will vouch for them. They wiped out a hijack most professionally."

Without commenting, Pardee returned his attention to the girl. He listened to the several more songs in her set. He didn't ask any more questions of Blancanales.

The girl hit the last chords of her last song as the jukebox blasted away her final lyrics, drowning out the few patrons who had the courtesy to applaud.

She hurried off the stage and rushed through the backstage door.

"Assholes," Pardee muttered, casting a surly eye at the crowd. "Don't have good manners. They pay to hear a singer, then they don't listen. They work in an office, then dress up like cowboys. Civilians. I even see puke faggots wearing camouflage on the streets. Total mystery to me."

"They're bored," Blancanales replied. "They wear suits during the day, so they want something different. Like you, you're not in uniform. You're wearing a suit."

Pardee grinned. His smile looked like the fixed grimace of a skull. "Suit's just another uniform to me. You wouldn't believe how many suits I've ruined with other people's blood."

The girl arrived. "Craig, let's get out of here," she said immediately, pulling at Pardee's arm. She carried a guitar case and had an oversized purse over her shoulder, but no more Texas hat. She glanced at Blancanales. He saw tears streaming from her eyes.

Pardee threw money on the table, then followed the girl through the crowd. Blancanales followed Pardee.

Blancanales fell back for an instant and spoke to the miniature microphone in his lapel. "We're coming out."

Waiting in the parking lot, Gadgets and Lyons heard their partner's announcement through the earphones of the radio receiver. They slouched down in the rented car's seats.

At the exit, Pardee turned to Blancanales. "We'll drop her off first. Then we'll go down to the docks."

"My friends are outside in the..."

But Pardee didn't hear. He saw the club manager standing with a waitress. Pointing his index finger like a pistol, Pardee sneered into his face: "You cater to lowlife assholes!"

The manager tried to slap the finger aside. Pardee drove the finger powerfully into the manager's solar plexus. The manager collapsed gasping.

In the parking lot, the girl cried as she walked. "I'm never going to sing in a beer bar again. Never! It is just so humiliating, it's so..."

"You were good," Pardee consoled her. "I couldn't hear you most of the time, but you sounded good. You looked good..."

She wiped away her tears. "I know I'm good. I'm crying because they didn't pay attention. I thought working an international resort would be classy, but it was just a beer bar."

Four toughs in black shirts and pants, the uniform of the local gangs, lounged against a car. When they saw the three foreigners approaching, the gang boys stopped talking and stared. One tough put his hand under his shirt.

Pardee's right hand went toward his left underarm as he stepped toward the four youths. Then motion blurred on the near side of them. Blancanales lunged to grab that fifth punk, but it was too late. The girl shrieked.

The fifth punk jerked her head back by her hair, put an eight-inch blade to her throat. "Drop dat pistol, fat man!"

Pardee pointed a .45 Auto-Colt at the four gang boys. He turned, pointed the pistol at the fifth. The punk ducked behind the girl, shielding himself. He peeked out at Pardee as he pressed the knife against the girl's throat.