He held a recurved bow, forty-two inches long, made of layers of fiberglass laminated around a yew core. Brennan knew it was a good bow. He had made it himself. It pulled at sixty pounds, powerful enough to bring down a deer, bear, or man.

The case also held a three-fingered leather glove which Brennan slipped on his right hand and a small quiver of arrows which he attached to his belt by Velcro tabs. He pulled one free. It was tipped by a hunting broadhead with four razorsharp vanes. He nocked it loosely to the taut string and, more silent than the cats scrabbling through the uncollected garbage, crept to the restaurant's back door.

He listened, but could hear nothing. He tried the door, found it unlocked, and cracked it open half an inch. An arc of light spilled out and he found himself looking into a swatch of the kitchen. It, too, was empty and quiet.

He slid inside, a silent blot of darkness in the stainless steel and white porcelain room. Keeping low, moving fast, he went to the double swinging doors that led out into the dining area and cautiously peeked through the oval window set into the door. He saw what he had been afraid he would see. The waiters, cooks, and customers were huddled together in one corner of the room under the watchful eyes of a man armed with an automatic pistol. Two others held Minh spreadeagled against a wall while a third worked him over. Minh's face was bruised and bloody, his eyes were swollen shut. The man who was beating him methodically with a leather sap was also questioning him.

Brennan slipped down below the window, his teeth clenched, rage swelling the veins in his neck and reddening his face.

Kien had recognized Minh and ordered him hunted down. Minh was one of the few people in America who could identify Kien, who knew that he had methodically and ruthlessly used his position as an ARVN general to betray his country, his men, and his American allies. Brennan, of course, also knew Kien for what he was. He also knew that whatever place Kien had made for himself in America, those in authority would respect, listen to, and probably even fear him. Brennan, on the other hand, since he had walked away from the Army in disgust during the debacle of the Fall of Saigon, was an outlaw. No one in authority knew that he was back in the States, and he wanted to keep it that way.

He reached into his back pocket, withdrew a hood, and slipped it on, covering his features from his upper lip to the top of his head.

He took a moment to breathe deep, to drown his emotions in a void of nothingness, to forget his rage, his fear, his friend, his need for revenge, to forget even himself. He became nothing so that he would be all. He was not angry, not calm. He rose silently to his feet and stepped through the door, sank down on one knee behind a table and drew his first shaft.

The quiet, assured words of Ishida, his roshi, filled his mind like the somnolent tolling of a great bell.

"Be simultaneously the aimer and the aimed, the hitter and hit. Be a full vessel waiting to be emptied. Loose your burden when the moment is right, without thinking or direction, and in that manner know the Way."

He stared without seeing, forgetting whether his targets were men or bales of hay, loosed his first shaft, dropped his hand to the quiver at his belt, took out his next arrow, nocked, lifted the bow, and drew the string while the first shaft was still on its way.

The first arrow hit while he was shifting his aim to take in the third target. They realized they were being attacked by the time the second arrow had struck and the fourth was released. By then it was too late.

He had chosen the order of his targets before becoming submerged in the void. The first was the man guarding the hostages with the drawn gun. The shaft struck him in the back, high on the left side. It skewered his heart, sliced through one lung, and burst out half a foot from his chest. The impact hurled him forward, astonished, into the arms of a waiter.

They both stared at the bloody aluminum shaft protruding from his chest. The gunman opened his mouth to swear or pray, but blood gushed forth, drowning his words. He slumped forward, his legs gone rubbery, and the waiter dropped him.

The two who held Minh released him. He slumped to the floor as they reached for the weapons at their belts. One had his hand pinned to his stomach before he could draw; the other was nailed to the wall. He dropped his pistol and clutched at the shaft pinning him like an insect staked to a drying-board. The last, the one who had been questioning Minh, whirled around and was struck in the side. The arrow angled upward, slipped between his ribs, pierced his heart, and punched upward through his right shoulder.

Nine seconds had elapsed. The sudden silence was broken only by the pained weeping of the man nailed to the wall.

Brennan crossed the room in a dozen strides. The hostages were still too stunned to move. Two of the thugs were dead. Brennan took no pleasure in their deaths, as he took no pleasure in killing deer to provide meat for his table. It was just something that had to be done. Neither did he waste his pity on them.

The one who was gutshot was curled up on the floor, unconscious and in shock. The other, pinned to the wall by the shaft that had pierced his chest, was still alert. Fear twisted his face and when he looked into Brennan's eyes his sobbing grew to a wail.

Brennan stared at him without remorse. He drew a shaft from his quiver. The man started to babble. Brennan slashed out. The broadhead cut the man's throat as easily as if it were a razor. Brennan dispassionately stepped aside from the sudden spurt of blood, slipped the arrow back into the quiver, and knelt down by Minh.

He was badly hurt. All his limbs were broken-it must have been agonizing to have been held up the way he wasand internal damage must have been massive. His breathing was shallow and shuddering. His eyes were swollen shut. They probably wouldn't have focused even if he could have opened them.

"Ong Id ai?" he breathed at Brennan's gentle, probing touch. Who are you?

"Brennan."

Minh smiled a ghastly smile. Blood bubbled on his lips and gleamed on his teeth.

"I knew you would come, Captain."

"Don't speak. We have to get help-"

Minh shook his head. The effort cost him. He coughed and grimaced in pain.

"No. I am dying. I must tell you. It is Kien. This proves it. They wanted to know if I told anyone, but I would say nothing. They don't know of you."

"They will," Brennan promised. Minh coughed again.

"I had hoped to help. Like the old days. Like the old days." His mind wandered for a moment and Brennan looked up.

"Call an ambulance," he ordered. "And the police. Tell them there's three more on the street in front. Move." One of the waiters leaped to follow his orders while the others watched in mute incomprehension.

"Help you," Minh repeated, "help you." He fell silent for a moment and then seemed to make a supreme effort to speak rationally and clearly. "You must listen. Scar has kidnapped Mai. I was following him, trying to get a lead to where he had taken Mai, when I saw him and Kien together in the back of a limousine. Go to Chrysalis, Crystal Palace. She might know where he's taken her. I couldn't… find… out." His last sentence was interrupted by bloody fits of coughing.

"Why did they take her?" Brennan asked gently. "For her hands. Her bloody hands."

Brennan wiped the beads of sweat from Minh's forehead. "Rest easy now," he said.

But Minh didn't listen. He rose up, clutching Brennan's arm.

"Find Mai. Help. Her."

He settled back, sighed. Blood bubbled on his lips. "Toi met," he said. I am tired.

Brennan clenched his jaw against the ache and answered softly in. Vietnamese.

"Rest, then."

Minh nodded and died.