It was 3:47 A.M.

Cold December moonlight filtered into the master bedroom through a pair of many-paned French doors, outlining the man and woman sleeping in bed. Taxman could smell the faint trace of the perfume that Mrs. Emlinger had worn that day.

Hammerhead stepped hesitantly up to the bed and jacked a round into the Glock’s chamber.

The sharp click-click brought Emlinger suddenly upright. He stared wild-eyed at the two men. Hammerhead aimed at him but did not shoot.

Emlinger threw off his covers and lunged out of bed. Hammerhead stood there, paralyzed.

From the doorway, Taxman fired three quick rounds past him. Emlinger staggered, throwing his hands above his head like a Hollywood gunfighter, before crashing against a bureau and falling heavily to the floor.

Taxman stepped into the room. He had been ready for the freeze-up. No amount of training could prepare someone for killing a human being the first time. He gave Hammerhead a hard shove with the heel of his hand and jerked his head toward Mrs. Emlinger. She was sitting up now, pressed back against the headboard, clutching the covers to shield herself.

“Stop,” she gasped, holding out a hand to fend them off. Her body and her voice both trembled. “Take whatever you want.”

Hammerhead raised his pistol again, with a two-handed combat grip.

“No, my God,” she pleaded. “I’ll do anything.” Abruptly she dropped the covers. The moonlight illuminated her fair skin and shapely breasts.

Hammerhead still did not shoot. Taxman could see that his hands were shaking.

He aimed his own pistol at Mrs. Emlinger. She screamed, a desperate piercing wail. Hammerhead jerked with a violent shudder, as if the sound slashed into him like a knife. Finally, his finger closed on the Glock’s trigger.

The scream was cut short by the silenced whump. Her hands flew back against the headboard, her head twisting to the side.

Hammerhead stood frozen again, openmouthed, staring at what he had done. Taxman gave him another hard shove.

“You ever hang up like that again, I’ll kill you myself,” he said harshly. “Now make sure.”

Hammerhead got closer to Mrs. Emlinger, stumbling. Hands still shaking, he shot her again in the right temple, point blank. Her body jerked obscenely with the impact, then sagged, tipping to the side, as if into sleep.

“Him, too,” Taxman said.

Emlinger was lying face down on the thick carpet. Hammerhead knelt over him and fired a shot into the base of his skull, just above where it joined his neck. His face bounced off the carpet.

The collection of antique jade was downstairs in the living room, on display in a large glass case. Taxman shined a mini-flashlight over the dozens of items-delicately carved lions and Buddhas, bracelets, rings, and ornaments. He knew that it was valued at more than a quarter of a million dollars, and many of the pieces were listed in art history registries.

“Pick something out for your girl,” Taxman said.

Hammerhead’s eyes widened. Like a child who’d been offered a piece of candy, he moved his hand over the case, trying to decide. It stopped, pointing, above a dark-green, gold-chained pendant shaped like a roaring dragon.

Taxman smashed the glass with his pistol butt and handed the pendant to Hammerhead. “Take this, brother, may it serve you well,” he said. “You’re maquis now.”

He scooped the other items into his pack, then beeped on his belt radio to summon Shrinkwrap, who was waiting a few blocks away, her hair dyed gray and her face aged with makeup-a well-to-do, middle-aged lady driving a BMW 750 iL. The jade would be picked up by other maquis and taken to Los Angeles, where, within hours, it was going to start turning up in homeless camps, just like the Calamity Jane golf clubs.

Monks stepped out of the lodge in the gray light of dawn. His eyes still burned faintly from the Mace his attacker had sprayed him with, and his ribs ached where they had crashed against the floor.

He had done a lot of thinking during the long predawn hours.

The camp was deserted except for the inevitable guard skulking near the perimeter, a thin figure with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder. Monks recognized him as the unlucky Sidewinder, who had staggered away from the camp-fire last night wrapped in a bloody, gutted deer carcass. He looked sullen and avoided eye contact. He had been punished for asking Monks a question about the dangers of eating raw flesh, and probably he blamed Monks, the way that everyone else around here seemed to.

Monks walked to the washhouse, taking advantage of his aloneness to look around for possible routes out of here. Nothing seemed promising. The mist was so thick that the tops of the trees ringing the camp were lost in it.

Monks had enough experience in mountain hiking to know that even open terrain was likely to be treacherous. Trails petered out, branched bewilderingly, led into deadfall-choked ravines or unscalable chasms. Without a compass, in poor visibility, getting turned around was almost a given. And this terrain was anything but open. Then there were the other obstacles-starting with armed guards.

The only faint chance, he decided, would be to enlist an ally-someone who knew the turf.

And a weapon would come in mighty handy.

“The Indians thought white men were really weird,” said a voice in his ear.

Monks jerked away in shock and twisted to see Freeboot, standing close enough to touch him. Where did he come from? Monks hadn’t heard a whisper of his approach.

“For wanting to shit inside,” Freeboot finished. He was watching Monks benignly, thumbs hooked in his belt. “The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. So feel free to use the woods, Rasp.” Freeboot swept his hand in an expansive, offering gesture.

Then he focused on the side of Monks’s head, squinting in almost comic puzzlement.

“You decide to give yourself a haircut?” Freeboot said.

“I cut myself shaving,” Monks said.

Freeboot seemed amused by the comeback. In fact, Monks’s stubble of beard was bristling noticeably.

“I’m going to remind you that we’ve got to get your son out of here,” Monks said. “I’ll make you a deal. Let me take him, and-”

“You won’t say nothing about us, and nobody will know where he came from,” Freeboot interrupted. “Shrinkwrap already told me.”

“Well?”

“Sorry, dude. No can do, not right now. How are the supplies holding up?”

“It’s not about how the supplies are holding up,” Monks said. “It’s about how Mandrake’s holding up.”

“I thought he was getting better.”

“The insulin helped stabilize him, but that’s not going to last.”

“You gotta get a more positive attitude,” Freeboot said, shaking his head.

“I’m just telling you how it is.”

Freeboot’s eyes flared, in his characteristic instant transition from seeming tranquility to menace.

“You don’t tell me how it is. I tell you.”

Freeboot turned away suddenly, toward a wrist-thick dead branch jutting out from a pine tree, about the height of a basketball hoop. He was less than six feet tall but he leaped up, caught it with his right hand, and dangled there.

“I was a punk kid,” he yelled out. “Spent a lot of my life in jail. Dope, petty theft, finally pulled five years for armed robbery. I was looking at that third strike.”

He started chinning himself with the one arm. Monks counted ten before he paused again. He did not seem to be straining.

“Then I had a epiphany,” Freeboot bellowed. It was another term, like virtu, that didn’t come naturally from his lips. “I don’t mean like all the guys in the joint who get religion. I saw through this fucked-up society-what it did to me, and how stupid I was to let it. That’s when everything changed. I started to read, man. I started to think.”