"Whatever it is, it sure's shaped shaped like a hat," he said, glancing down at it. like a hat," he said, glancing down at it.

"Well, they didn't mention any brand of headware besides a Stetson per se," per se," she said, and smiled. "Why don't you go ahead and see if this makes a decent subst.i.tute." she said, and smiled. "Why don't you go ahead and see if this makes a decent subst.i.tute."

His brows furrowing, he removed the tissue paper.

And audibly gasped.

The acorn-ended campaign hat was old and battered almost to shapelessness, its gray felt balding in spots, its black leather chin strap scuffed and gnarled. But its gold-and-black intertwined-braid hat cord and the silk ribbon around its crown were almost perfectly intact--as were the crossed gold cavalry sabers pinned to the side of its upturned brim.

He looked up at her. "Don' let me make a fool a' myself by sayin' what I think think it is an' bein' wrong." it is an' bein' wrong."

"You wouldn't be," she said. "It belonged to my great-grandfather. He was one of Teddy Roosevelt's First Volunteer Cavalry."

"Mon Dieu." He ran his fingers over the outside of the hat with open awe. "The Rough Riders." He ran his fingers over the outside of the hat with open awe. "The Rough Riders."

She nodded. " 'Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither suffer much nor enjoy much--"

"--'cause they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat,' " Thibodeau finished. "I don' know what to say about this, Megan. I truly don't."

She smiled.

"Taylor Breen went from holding a racket on the tennis court to a rifle on Kettle Hill in the s.p.a.ce of six months. Joined the unit at TD's personal request, took a leave of absence of his professorship at Yale to go to war against Spain." She paused a moment, quietly watching him. "Rollie ... I've got my own request goes along with the hat. I won't pressure you to agree to it. But I'd like your decision now."

He met her eyes with his own.

"This have to do with me fillin' Max Blackburn's old job?"

She gave him another nod.

"When we discussed the issue a few weeks back, you told me that you needed to think about it, that you weren't sure you wanted to tackle the responsibility--"

"Or that Pete Nimec wanted me to," he said. "My dope was that he had someone else in mind, an' the two of you were b.u.t.tin' heads about it."

"He did, and we were, but things have changed. Part of it's what happened here the other night. How well you handled it."

"Nimec feel the same way?"

"He and I had a talk before I left for Brazil," she said. "And have reached a tentative agreement."

"Sounds to me like there's a catch hid somewhere in this proposition."

Megan laughed a little.

"I am am a woman." a woman."

"As I did say, I'd noticed." He looked at her. "The catch ... you gonna mention what it is?"

"Yes," she said. "After you tell me whether you'll accept the promotion."

Thibodeau looked at her a moment, looked down at the campaign hat. Then he lifted it off his lap and placed it carefully on his head.

"Fit okay?" he asked.

"Perfect."

"Will you marry me?"

"No."

He shrugged.

"Might as well accept your your offer just the same, if only 'cause it'll get me off the night shift." offer just the same, if only 'cause it'll get me off the night shift."

Megan put her hand over the back of his and gave it a fond squeeze.

"Congratulations," she said.

"And?"

She smiled at him.

"And," she said, "here's the catch...."

SIXTEEN.

COASTAL MAINE APRIL 22, 2001.

"YOU LOOKED TO MAKE SURE?" COBBS SAID. HE WAS chewing on a thick wad of gum. "I mean, you were chewing on a thick wad of gum. "I mean, you were watching, watching, right?" right?"

Dex plucked an imaginary lint ball off his mackinaw. It had been maybe ten minutes since he'd tied up the boat and Cobbs had already asked the question half a dozen times in one form or another.

"I told you, it's done," he said. "What more you want me to say?"

The look Cobbs gave him felt like a shove. He was wearing his Smokey hat and warden's uniform, and held a Remington 870 pump gun with 20-gauge chambering and a collapsible stock. His binoculars hung from a strap around his neck.

"I want you to tell me what you saw," he said bluntly.

Dex licked his lips. He heard something scrabble across the limb of a tree in the nearby woods and glanced distractedly toward the sound. Perched on the budding maple, a squirrel twitched its bushy tail as it nibbled on whatever morsel of food was in its forepaws, the bright black beads of its eyes warily studying the two humans below.

He turned back to Cobbs.

"Important thing's what me an' you ain't seen," he said.

"Meaning what?"

"Meanin' I didn't see no bubbles from my boat, an' you didn't see Ricci's head bobbin' up out the water through them binocs of yours," Dex said.

Cobbs stared at him and chewed his gum. They were in the shade behind the prominent slab of rock that marked their meeting spot on the beach.

"Let's sum this f.u.c.king thing up once more, just to help me picture it right in my mind," he said.

Dex expelled a deep, tired breath and nodded with resignation.

"You waited while the bubbles was still comin' up," Cobbs said.

Dex nodded wearily again.

"And when there wasn't wasn't any more you turned back here." any more you turned back here."

Dex nodded a third time.

"So in other words," Cobbs said, and hefted his Remington, "I won't need to get in the motorboat and use this shotgun to blow Ricci out of the water."

"Is the point I been tryin' to make," Dex replied, totally wiped out, and more disgusted with his lot than ever before.

Cobbs watched Dex another moment, looking as if he was about to hit him with another round of questions. Then he seemed to change his mind, pushed the chewing gum from the back of his mouth with his tongue, and spat it out onto the pebbly ground.

"Good riddance to one G.o.d Almighty a.s.shole," he said.

Ricci splashed above the water just when he'd felt he couldn't exhale any longer and would drown within feet of the surface.

Exhausted and gasping, he floated on his back and swooped air into his lungs. Thus far he was feeling no symptoms of decompression sickness, but that didn't necessarily mean he could dismiss it as a serious concern. The first indications were usually a bone-deep pain in the joints of the arms or legs, and could take minutes or even hours to become apparent. Still, he had fair odds of getting away clean. The nitrogen gas in the bloodstream that caused the bends when you ascended too rapidly after long descents--decompression stops being meant to give it time to dissolve through respiratory processes--tended to acc.u.mulate in fatty tissue, and he'd worked hard to stay in peak shape for more reasons than just impressing women at the gym.

He took a few moments to recoup, aware he couldn't spare too many more. Not safely anyway. The skiff was nowhere in sight, but it was almost certain the water was being scanned for signs of his reappearance--though he did not yet know whether it would be from the island, the skiff, or both. Whichever, he wasn't going to let himself be spotted.

He glanced around get his visual bearings, then double-checked them on his compa.s.s, having no idea how far he'd drifted from the dive site, or which direction the current might have taken him in. He quickly found that he was near the mouth of the cove and within a hundred yards of its southeastern flank. The skiff wasn't anywhere in sight, not that he'd expected it would be. To the contrary, he thought he could guess where Dex must have brought it.

His breath slow and almost regular now, Ricci allowed himself another twenty seconds to recover his strength, reached into his satchel for the eight-inch J snorkel he'd separated from his spare oxygen canister before ditching it, and put the mouthpiece between his lips. Then he turned facedown and lowered his head underwater, blew into the snorkel to make sure its airway was clear, and began to swim toward sh.o.r.e, his legs loose and straight behind him, his fins stroking smoothly, gliding unseen beneath the surface of the bay.

It was, he thought, a bad run of snake eyes. He'd been set up twice in as many days, and on both instances had felt bound to confront his opposition when it was their two against his one--only this time he couldn't count on Pete Nimec popping out of nowhere to even the odds.

Crouched low in a clump of juniper bushes perhaps five yards behind the jut of rock he'd noticed from the skiff, Ricci had just heard Cobbs and Dex working out a cover story to account for his "disappearance." Simple, but it didn't have to be anything more: b.u.mptious, know-it-all city boy Ricci had been diving for weeks without letting modest, conscientious local boy Dex properly check and maintain his scuba equipment, and since a tender couldn't do his job if the diver insisted on being foolhardy, Dex had given up trying to argue the point with him. Divers had gotten into bad fixes before through their own carelessness, and it would surely happen again in the future.

If Ricci's body didn't turn up, that would be that. And in the unlikely event it happened to float ash.o.r.e before scavenging crabs, lobsters, and groundfish picked it apart, even an honest investigator would conclude Ricci had died from an out-of-air accident due to instrument failure, based upon a post mortem exam and the faulty reading on his psi gauge. Why suspect the gauge had been jiggered with by his partner when there was no evidence of a prior falling out between them; indeed, when any of the dealers with whom they regularly did business would attest they'd seemed to get along fine as a team? And besides, considering that Dex would be handing his pile of homespun horses.h.i.t to the sheriff or one of his deputies, and would have Cobbs signing off on it, he could probably chalk Ricci's fate up to a Big-foot attack, alien abduction, or head-on collision with the Flying Dutchman and get away with it, no sweat.

Ricci looked and listened from the concealment of the brush. In their own way they were good, he thought, the only monkey wrench in their scheme being that he was better and savvier. His mistake--and he acknowledged it was significant--had been underestimating how far Dex could be pushed. Ricci had known Dex had his weaknesses, and they'd never quite been friends, but had always gotten on all right as partners. Much as he disliked admitting it to himself, he'd started out being a cop with a deep-rooted core of positivism, and some rudiments of that att.i.tude remained stubbornly lodged inside him despite having spent years exploring the darkest alleys of human nature. He'd been hesitant to think the worst of his partner, and had almost paid for it big-time.

Ricci breathed quietly, motionless, watching the two men stand and talk in the small, pebble-sprinkled clearing around the big rock. He had approached them through the woods at a diagonal, and was more or less behind Cobbs, who was turned toward the beach, with Dex facing inland in Ricci's general direction. While they had been ironing out the main points of their little deception, he'd put the finishing touches on a plan of his own, and it too was pretty bare. Cobbs had a weapon--not the sharpshooter's rifle Ricci had speculated about earlier, but a Remington pump, which at close range could pack an even deadlier wallop--and so would have to be taken down first. This time there was no truck door to pin his sorry a.s.s in, but the shotgun would only be a problem if he had the chance to use it. As for Dex ... he was unarmed, and would be easy.

Surprise and the ability to hit fast and hard were then Ricci's best a.s.sets. He'd abandoned his scuba tank, fins, and mask in the woods, and left himself wearing only the dry suit and knife rigs. The urchin knife would be of marginal use offensively and was in its scabbard. The pointed, double-edged blade was in his right hand. That baby had the meanness in it.

A breeze fluttered through the woods, and Ricci eased partially out of his crouch using the rustle of leaves, branches, and weeds to cover the sound of his movement. When the wind died down he stopped, then waited for another gust to stir the foliage and stole forward, falling back on his SEALs training again, obeying tried and proven fundamentals of stalking one's quarry. Registering one leg in front of the other. Touching the ground with the ball of his foot and slowly lowering his heel while scanning for rocks, fallen leaves, anything that might trip him up or be disturbed by his weight. Shifting direction every few steps so that the brush wouldn't sway unnaturally and attract attention.

The wind quieted. He paused. The two men were still talking. Cobbs's back was now less than three feet in front of him through the brush that const.i.tuted Ricci's self-designated skirmish line. Another draft of wind and he would launch from his concealed position, tackle Cobbs from behind, and hopefully disarm him before he could get off a single shot.

It was the squirrel that screwed things up.

"... want to make it look good, you ought to wait another couple hours, then phone in a diver emergency to me and and the sheriff's office," Cobbs was saying. "I'll handle it like any other--" the sheriff's office," Cobbs was saying. "I'll handle it like any other--"

He stopped talking and gave Dex a questioning glance.

Dex had suddenly cast his eyes toward the maple tree on which he'd noticed the munching squirrel a short while before. Already on heightened guard because of his and Cobbs's near proximity, it had been startled from its perch and abruptly gone bounding up the tree amid a loud rattle of branches, dropping the seed pod it had been clutching in its obvious fright. This instigated a sort of chain reaction, the commotion sending a jolt through Dex's tightly wound nerves, prompting him to jerk his head up toward the squirrel, then drop his gaze to the creeping junipers below it--and just a few feet behind Cobbs--to find out what could have sent the little animal fleeing That was when he saw a dead man about to spring from between two of the bushes in a semi-crouch, his fist clenched around the haft of a long knife.

His face all at once draining of color, his mouth yawping open, too shocked to utter more than a wordless cry of alarm and incomprehension, he thrust out his arm to frantically gesture in Ricci's direction.

Without knowing what was going on except that something had scared the living daylights out of Dex, Cobbs spun on his heels, raised his shotgun, and brought its barrel around to where he was pointing.

Ricci was about to make his move when he heard the spooked squirrel in the treetop, then saw Dex turn to investigate its racket, his eyes sweeping up the tree, then down to land directly upon him and widen with stunned confusion.

There was no time to hesitate. Even as Dex began gesturing wildly--and a split second before Cobbs swiveled his upraised shotgun around toward him--Ricci broke from cover and came at the warden in a scrambling, straight-ahead run, ducking below the shotgun's muzzle.

The gun roared above his head, its load gouging into the tree trunk behind Ricci and flurrying the area with shaves and splinters of bark. Cobbs rocked backward from the weapon's kick, but was surprisingly quick to recover, and managed to chamber another round before Ricci could reach him. Ricci heard the chock-chock chock-chock of the Remington's pump action and saw Cobbs swing it down at him, and charged in underneath it with his knees bent, then sprang to his full height, grabbed the middle of its barrel with his left hand, and forced the muzzle upward. Cobbs squeezed the trigger on reflex and shot a second load of steel pellets harmlessly into the air. of the Remington's pump action and saw Cobbs swing it down at him, and charged in underneath it with his knees bent, then sprang to his full height, grabbed the middle of its barrel with his left hand, and forced the muzzle upward. Cobbs squeezed the trigger on reflex and shot a second load of steel pellets harmlessly into the air.

Without releasing the weapon's barrel, Ricci smashed his right forearm against Cobbs's neck, then hit him twice on the jaw with his elbow while jerking the shotgun around hard to the left.

Cobbs's chin snapped to the side and blood instantly began streaming from his mouth. His lips stretched into a grimace of fury and pain, he managed to hang onto the gun, but Ricci pushed close against him, using both his hand and body to keep the barrel angled upward and sideways. Cobbs hung on. Ricci had not thought he would have as much fight in him, but anger and adrenaline could give people the strength to stay committed. Still, he had to finish him before Dex got involved.

Ricci shoved against him with his chest, forcing him to stumble backward. The moment he had him off balance, Ricci jammed his right elbow into Cobbs's stomach and, as he doubled over with a groan, finally got the shotgun out of his hands.

A moment later Ricci dropped down into a squat and shoved his dive knife into the top of Cobbs's boot, putting his arm and shoulder into the blow, driving in the blade until all six inches of it had penetrated his foot and sunk into the dirt beneath him.

Cobbs released a howling, animalistic scream that grew in volume and shrillness as he tried to lift his impaled foot off the ground and realized that he couldn't. His face bright crimson, the whites of his eyes enormous, he looked down at himself and saw blood swell up around the knife handle projecting from the upper part of his boot, simultaneously draining from where the blade had cut through its treaded rubber sole. His screams reached a ragged peak of hysteria and cracked apart, dissolving into moist snuffles.

"Look what you done to me!" he whimpered, and sank to his knees, looking up at Ricci, water gushing from his eyes. Blood smudged his lips and chin like grotesque stage makeup, and there was a slurry thickness to his speech that told Ricci his jaw had either been dislocated or broken. "Oh, f.u.c.k Oh, oh, sweet G.o.d, look what you f.u.c.king done!" "Oh, f.u.c.k Oh, oh, sweet G.o.d, look what you f.u.c.king done!"

Ricci ignored him. He had straightened up and could see the bushes thrashing to his left where Dex had plunged into the woods. So much for his helping Cobbs. Ricci whipped off after him, both hands around the shotgun he'd torn from Cobbs's grasp.

Dex's lead was slight and his panic flung him blindly through the low branches and undergrowth. He stumbled over roots, crashed against bushes and tree limbs.

Despite the relative bulkiness of his dry suit, Ricci closed the distance between them in less than a minute.