W ithin the hour, Jack was on a seaplane headed back to Nassau. The ocean below was as black as the night, making it nearly impossible to distinguish the low-hanging stars from the scattering of lights across the island landscape. Jack was glad that it wasn’t his job to discern up from down. He rode in the copilot’s seat beside Theo’s friend and the owner of the aircraft, Zack Hamilton. A City of Miami police officer was in the row behind them.

The Bahamas are made up of some 700 islands and 2,400 cays, though only about thirty are inhabited, and two-thirds of a total population of 300,000 lives in Nassau. Jack couldn’t count the number of times that he and Theo had, on a whim, hopped on his motorboat and made the sixty-mile trip from Key Biscayne to the nearest Caribbean refueling station-gasoline for the boat, Mount Gay rum for the boaters-on the island of Bimini. Nassau is farther northwest, but it still seemed as though their seaplane had just leveled off when it was time to begin their descent. Slowly, the seemingly random arrangement of glowing dots ahead organized themselves into long, parallel lines of blue guiding lights.

“Prepare for landing,” said Zack. He was speaking into the microphone on his headset, his voice tinny but audible over the drone of the twin prop engines.

“Are you going to put us down on a landing strip?” said Jack.

“Beats the hell out of the forest.”

It was the kind of wiseass response that Jack should have expected from one of Theo’s oldest buddies. “I meant as opposed to the water. This is a seaplane.”

“Runway’s a lot safer at night. But we can do the water, if you really want to.”

“No, thanks,” was what he said, but he was thinking, Not in this flying death-trap.

Zack checked his flight instruments as he finished off his last swallow of orange Nehi and sucked the greasy remnants of a party-sized bag of Cheetos from his fingertips. He seemed to possess an insatiable appetite for anything orange and edible, so long as it was artificially colored and of absolutely no nutritional value. It was just one more trait that served to underscore the fact that Jack was unlike Zack in every conceivable way but two: Their first names rhymed, and they were both friends with Theo Knight. A side-by-side comparison of the two men would have yielded unassailable scientific proof that the tiny fraction of DNA that differentiated one human being from the next was unquestionably the most significant fraction of anything in the entire universe. Zack was nearly seven feet tall, and he wore his hair in cornrows that hung down longer than Jack’s arms. His build made Theo look slight. A knee injury in his rookie season had deep-sixed his NBA career, but fortunately, the signing bonus was big enough to set him up in his own business. Flying became his new passion, and Jack had to admire a guy who had managed to turn a fallback career into something he loved. Still, it was hard to imagine that anything less than the power of Theo could have brought Jack and Zack together at two o’clock on a Saturday morning.

They landed and quickly deplaned onto the runway. With the assistance of local law enforcement, they cleared customs and immigration in expedited fashion. A Bahamian police officer met them in the terminal and took them straight to a squad car parked in a no-parking zone in front of the airport. Jack and Zack rode in the backseat, and the Miami cop took the passenger seat. The car didn’t pull away fast enough to suit Jack.

“We’re kind of in a hurry,” he said.

The Bahamian cop glanced in his rearview mirror. He had a round, pudgy face and the eyes of a hound dog, at once dull and expressive, if that was possible. “’Course you is, mon.”

Traffic was light at this hour, and until they reached the outskirts of Nassau, Jack counted more stray goats and chickens than oncoming automobiles. Twenty minutes later, they arrived at the Greater Bahamian Bank amp; Trust Company. Jack climbed out of the car, and the others followed him up the concrete stairway. The front doors were solid glass, and the inside of the bank was dark, save for the typical security lights that burned after hours. A security guard emerged from the shadows and came to the door. He spoke through an intercom that crackled like a grease fire. “We’re closed.”

Jack held his tongue, but Zack blurted out exactly what he was thinking. “Don’t you think we know that, Einstein?”

Jack hoped it had gone unheard. He leaned closer to the speaker box and said, “The manager was supposed to meet us here and let us in.”

The guard shrugged and said, “Mr. Riley’s not here.”

Jack gave up on the guard and turned to the local cop. “Where is Riley?”

The Bahamian flashed those hound-dog eyes again. “He be late.”

“He can’t be late. When’s he getting here?”

“Soon.”

“How soon?”

“Soon as I call him.”

“Well then, would you call him, please,” said Jack, his tone more impatient than polite. “Like I told you before, we’re really in a hurry.”

The Bahamian started slowly back to his car, presumably toward his radio. “’Course you in a hurry, mon. The whole world be hurryin’.”

Jack felt a throbbing headache coming on. Theo would have known exactly how to deal with these chumps. For a split second, Jack found himself wishing his friend were there, until he quickly realized that if Theo were there, that would have eliminated any need to come in the first place. Jack massaged away the pain between his eyes.

I’m losing my mind.

SERGEANT PAULO WAS reacquainting himself with the inside of the police communications vehicle. It was familiar territory to him. He had everything he needed: his favorite chair, his old coffee mug, a bone mike to communicate with his team leaders in the field, and a telephone within easy reach, to speak with Falcon.

The coordination of efforts between city and county law enforcement was a work in progress, but the key roles had been defined. Like most crisis units, this one included several teams: negotiations, tactical, traffic control, and communications. The lead negotiator was Paulo, whose primary responsibility was to speak directly to the subject. Sergeant Malloy of MDPD was the secondary negotiator. His job was to assist Paulo and take notes. Intelligence officers from both MDPD and the city would conduct interviews and gather information for the negotiators. A staff psychologist was on hand to evaluate the subject’s responses and recommend negotiating strategies.

The two departments would share responsibility for traffic control, and the tactical teams also overlapped. Snipers from each department assumed strategic positions on rooftops across the street from the motel. The assault teams stood ready to go. It was agreed, however, that if they were forced to use breachers-specially trained tactical-team members who could blow open doors or windows-MDPD would go in first.

It was also agreed that Alicia would be Paulo’s eyes.

“You nervous?” she asked as she poured fresh coffee from a Styrofoam go-cup into his mug. It was just the two of them in the communications van, as Paulo had requested some time alone to organize his thoughts for the initial contact.

“I have a sinking suspicion that I’m in this for the long haul.”

“Would you rather it was in the hands of someone like Chavez or Malloy?”

“Part of me would, yeah.”

“How can you even think that way?”

He drank from his cup. “If this goes badly, you know how the headlines will read, don’t you?”

“‘Blind Guy Blows It’?”

It was kind of funny, the way his literal mind immediately conjured up the image of “BLIND GUY BLOWS IT” beneath the Miami Tribune masthead. “You always did beat around the bush, didn’t you?”

“Sorry. But I wouldn’t be so direct if I actually thought you were going to blow it.”