He nodded and reached for his door handle.

"Sit tight," he said.

"Pete, you sure it's wise to--"

"No," he said. "I'm not."

And then shouldered open the door, exited the car, and walked toward the pickup over the narrow country road.

That was when Sheriff's Deputy Phipps seemed to take notice of him--belatedly and for the first time. He cast a quick glance at Nimec, then past him at the parked Chevy, keeping the pistol trained on Ricci ... who had also partially turned in Nimec's direction.

"You blind, blind, mister?" Phipps said. One eye on him, the other on Ricci. "Or did you just happen to miss what's going on here?" mister?" Phipps said. One eye on him, the other on Ricci. "Or did you just happen to miss what's going on here?"

Nimec shrugged.

"Tourist," he said. "We've been waiting awhile."

The deputy said nothing. He looked at the Chevy again, this time suspiciously checking out its front tag.

"It's a rental," Nimec said. Stalling, trying to cook up some kind of plan that would extricate Ricci, not to mention himself, from the situation.

Whatever the h.e.l.l the situation was.

"Wife and I are headed for Stonington," he said. "Figured I'd ask when we might be able to pa.s.s."

Phipps stared at him, vexed and confused.

"You see," Nimec said, "we've got reservations at an inn that they'll only hold for another half hour. And being that we just drove all the way up from Portland on Route 1--"

"Which is what you're gonna have to swing back around onto," Phipps interrupted. "Right this minute."

Nimec shook his head.

"Sorry," he said. "Can't do that."

Phipps looked incredulous. "What "What did you say?" did you say?"

"Can't do that," Nimec repeated, knowing he'd really stepped into it now. "There aren't any other inns open. Being that this is the off-season."

Phipps flushed. Though he was still pointing his gun at Ricci, his attention had turned fully to Nimec.

"Another f.u.c.kin' flatlander, flatlander, why the f.u.c.k we let them people into the f.u.c.kin' state of Maine?" Cobb screamed from inside the truck, his voice only slightly m.u.f.fled. "You better arrest the whole queer bunch of them, Phipps, 'cause my back's gonna snap like a twig I stay stooped over like this!" why the f.u.c.k we let them people into the f.u.c.kin' state of Maine?" Cobb screamed from inside the truck, his voice only slightly m.u.f.fled. "You better arrest the whole queer bunch of them, Phipps, 'cause my back's gonna snap like a twig I stay stooped over like this!"

Phipps eyed Nimec with a kind of hostile exasperation, unconsciously wagging his head, looking uncertain about what to do next.

An instant later Ricci made the decision for him. Taking advantage of Phipps's distraction, he suddenly stepped away from the door of the pickup, caught hold of his outstretched gun hand at the wrist, and bent it sharply backward, simultaneously turning sideways and s.n.a.t.c.hing the pistol with his free hand.

Phipps released a cry of pain and surprise as the pistol was torn from his grasp. He was still gaping in disbelief when Ricci's leg snapped forward and up in a powerful front kick, the ball of his foot striking him in the broad, chunky stretch of his stomach. The air whoofing out of him, he stumbled backward and landed hard on his bottom, his legs wishboned in front of him.

Cobbs, meanwhile, had pulled his head out of the pickup's open door and come charging at Ricci from behind. But before he had gotten more than a couple of feet, Ricci spun in a smooth circle on his left leg, his right leg swinging parallel to the ground and thrusting out at the knee, catching Cobbs in the groin with a roundhouse kick. He flew back against the side of the car and doubled over, groaning, his hands between his thighs.

Ricci ejected the Colt's magazine and tossed it into the spindling roadside brush, then shoved the gun into his vest pocket. Nodding at him, Nimec rushed over to Cobb and took his pistol from its holster. Its clip joined the one that was already in the bushes.

Ricci knelt over Phipps and patted down the bottom of his trouser legs.

"Nothing there to say peekaboo?" he said.

Phipps glared and shook his head.

"Okay," Ricci told him, stepping back. "Here's how it goes. We're all driving off, me with my catch, you two without your guns, our friendly tourist with his nice wife and rental car. You forget about this thing, maybe I don't report the little scam you and Cobbs tried running on me to Fish and Game or the attorney general's office down in Augusta. You really really behave yourselves, maybe I won't tell anybody in town how I kicked both your a.s.ses and disarmed you barehanded. In two seconds flat." behave yourselves, maybe I won't tell anybody in town how I kicked both your a.s.ses and disarmed you barehanded. In two seconds flat."

Phipps continued glaring at him in baleful silence for another moment, then slowly nodded.

"Good," Ricci said. "Stay right where you are until I'm gone. Ground needs thawing anyway."

Phipps snorted, hawked over his shoulder, and looked back up at him. "How the h.e.l.l am I supposed to explain losing my gun?"

Ricci shrugged.

"Your problem," he said.

Behind them, Cobbs was still leaning against the pickup, moaning and clutching himself. Ricci turned, strode over to him, grabbed his shoulder, and shoved him roughly away from the truck. Cobbs tripped and fell on his side, drawing his knees toward his chest.

Ricci looked at Nimec, then moved up close to him.

"Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d should've kept his hands off my ignition keys," he said in a voice too low for the others to hear. "Welcome to Vacationland, Pete. Better get back in your car and follow along behind me. I'll explain everything once we're at my place."

They had come in from the rugged plateau country of Chapada dos Guimaraes, a convoy of four dusty jeeps b.u.mping along the unpaved track in the deepening dusk, traversing the seventy kilometers to their destination with arduous slowness. After many long hours of riding shotgun in the forward car, Kuhl had finally seen the compound through a break in the overhanging foliage, and then ordered their headlights dimmed and their vehicles pulled off the road.

Once under cover of the trees, he turned to his driver. "Que horas sao?" "Que horas sao?"

The driver showed him the luminous dial of his wrist.w.a.tch.

Kuhl studied it a moment without comment. Then he glanced over his seat rest and nodded to the man behind him.

"Vaya aqui, Antonio."

Antonio returned the nod. He was dressed entirely in black and had a Barrett M82A1 sniper's rifle across his lap. Accurate to a range exceeding a mile, it utilized the same self-loading, armor-piercing .50-caliber ammunition normally fired by heavy machine guns--bullets capable of pounding through an inch or more of solid steel armor. The weapon's incredible firepower and semiautomatic action were its notable advantages over other sniper guns. On the negative side, it was weighty, long-barreled, and would kick back with a recoil matching its destructive performance. But Antonio's targets would be shielded, and he would need to penetrate that shield at a considerable distance.

Slinging the Barrett over his shoulder, he opened his door and slipped from the jeep into the darkness.

Kuhl settled back and looked out the windshield. His team was right on schedule despite the wearisome inconveniences of their ride. There was nothing to do now except wait for Antonio to complete his work, and then for the others to arrive and give their signal. Perhaps he would even be able to glimpse them coming over the treetops.

They sat in absolute silence, hard, lean men in black combat outfits, their faces daubed from chin to forehead with camouflage paint. All but the sniper who'd gone on ahead carried French FAMAS a.s.sault rifles fitted with modular high-explosive munition launchers and day/ night target-tracking systems.

Still undergoing field trials by the French military, these adaptations of the standard FAMAS guns represented the state of the art in small arms, and were not slated for ma.s.s production or issuance to general infantry troops until 2003--two full years in the future.

Kuhl always made it a point to stay ahead of the game. It cost money, true, but unless one was willing to accept failure, the expense was more than acceptable. And he himself was paid handsomely enough that he didn't mind spreading the wealth.

Impatient, he raised his night-vision goggles to his eyes, swung them from the compound's checkpoint gate to the pair of men occupying its sentry booth, then studied the irregular outline of the buildings that lay beyond. He wanted nothing more than to get moving. While his team might be outside the observable range of the compound's guards, he had seen enough in his mercenary career to know that only a fool or an amateur neglected to consider the unpredictable, and that each pa.s.sing second brought an increased risk of discovery. It mattered little how well they formulated their plans, or how careful they were in bringing about their execution.

Secrecy, he thought. It was an essential requirement of his profession, and yet the very idea paradoxically seemed a joke. In an age when satellites could photograph a mole on your chin from somewhere up in s.p.a.ce, there were no true blind spots, and n.o.body was ever out of sight for long. The best one could wish for was temporary concealment. If his men failed at that, if they were noticed too soon, all their elaborate precautions would be worthless.

Kuhl sat, watched, and waited. In his taut silence, he could almost feel that gigantic, d.a.m.nable eye overhead, looking down, pressing down. Seeing what it wanted to see, peering through every shadow, its relentless gaze scouring the world....

Yes, Kuhl felt it up there, he did, and was only hoping it would once again blink as he went about the lucrative business of destruction.

"There's smoke in the cabin. Elevated CA 19-9 and CA 125 levels. LH2 pressure's dropping. Terra nos respuet. "

Annie feels her book about to slip off her lap, catches it just in the nick of time. She blinks once or twice, completely out of sorts, guessing she'd sunk into a light sleep while reading on her sofa.

She had been reading, hadn't she?

She readjusts the book and glances up at the man standing in front of her, the man whose voice startled her from her doze. In his midfifties, he has reddish-brown hair, a full mustache, and is wearing a white doctor's frock. Phil Lieberman, she thinks. The oncologist who has taken over her husband's case, not exactly the type to make house calls. She wonders what he's doing in her living room, wonders whether one of the kids might have let him in the door... but then suddenly realizes that this isn't her living room after all, isn't even part of her home, and that the children are nowhere around her.

She straightens, blinks again, rubs her eyes.

The chair on which she is sitting is contoured plastic. The air has a recycled quality and carries commingled antiseptic and medicinal smells. The walls are an inst.i.tutional noncolor.

It abruptly dawns on her that she is in the hospital.

In the hospital, in the third-floor waiting room that has become so numbingly familiar over these past few months, and where she must have dropped off like a stone with an open book on her lap. The hospital, of course. However strange it might ordinarily seem for her to have forgotten, these are far from ordinary days, and her brief disorientation is understandable in view of what's been happening in her life. She has gone for weeks with precious little rest, rushing from her husband's bedside to her training sessions at the Center and back again, trying not to neglect the kids amid her compounding pressures. It would not be the first time lately that the effort of keeping everything together has caught up to her without warning.

Looking at the doctor, she begins fidgeting nervously with the edges of the book--actually, she sees now, it is a magazine, a dog-eared copy of Newsweek with a featured piece about upcoming s.p.a.ce shuttle launches connected with the ISS program--the magazine, then, that is spread across her thighs. The doctor's expression is unrevealing, his voice without intonation, but there is a sobriety in his eyes that sends a cold, silent shiver running through her.

"Like the old t.i.tan rockets," he says. "Third stage fires, you're up and out. "

"What?" she says. "What was it you--"

"Mark's latest tests, we need to discuss their results, " " he interrupts with the kind of patronizing abruptness medical professionals seem to take as their right, an exalted privilege bestowed on them the moment they recite the Hippocratic Oath. It is as though even the ones capable of showing some compa.s.sion--and Annie acknowledges that Lieberman has, by and large, been decent with her--must insist on reminding you they have other patients, other cases, more urgent demands than having to explain their findings. he interrupts with the kind of patronizing abruptness medical professionals seem to take as their right, an exalted privilege bestowed on them the moment they recite the Hippocratic Oath. It is as though even the ones capable of showing some compa.s.sion--and Annie acknowledges that Lieberman has, by and large, been decent with her--must insist on reminding you they have other patients, other cases, more urgent demands than having to explain their findings.

"Laparoscopic exam revealed metastic tumors in the liver and gallbladder," he says rapidly. "Statistically common once the disease has spread from the intestine to so many of its a.s.sociated lymph nodes. Would have had a better chance with three lymphomas, but five is quite a bad crop. Very, very unfortunate. "

Annie sits very still as she listens, but can feel herself crumbling from the inside out, truly crumbling, as if her soul is made of brittle, hundred-year-old plaster. She gives him a decimated look.

"He'll be gone in five months," she says, the absolute certainty behind those words filling her with horror and bewilderment. She feels weirdly detached from the sound of her own voice, almost as if she hasn't really spoken at all, but is listening to a tape recording of herself, or maybe even some flawless impersonation issuing from a concealed intercom.

Dr. Lieberman regards her a moment in that serious yet matter-of-fact way of his. Then he shrugs his sleeve back from his wrist.w.a.tch, glances down at it, and holds it out to her, turning his arm to display the dial.

"Yes, five months, three days, to be precise," he says. "We're on the fast track now. Time runs by until there's none left. "

Perplexed by his comment, Annie looks at the watch.

Her eyes quickly grow enormous.

Its face is a blank white circle. Perfectly featureless, without digits, hands, or markings of any kind.

She feels another chunk of herself give way.

Blank.

The face of the watch is blank.

"Stay calm, Annie, it tends to run a bit ahead," Lieberman says. "There's still a chance for you to say good-bye. "

Annie suddenly finds herself out of her chair, and this time makes no attempt to catch her magazine as it spills off her thighs, landing on the floor at her feet. From the corner of her eye, she sees that the cover, which has partially folded under one of the interior pages, consists of a photo of a shuttle and launch tower consumed by a roiling ball of flame. Its bold red copy--also less than altogether visible from where she stands--screams something about an explosion involving Orion, one of the mid-schedule ISS a.s.sembly flights.

Confusion churns within her. How can this be? Orion's mission is still a couple of years off, and besides, the article had been an overview of the ISS program... at least she'd thought it had ...

All at once Annie isn't sure she remembers, just as she'd initially been unable to remember being at the hospital. Her memory seems a flat, slippery surface without depth or width.

"Your husband is in Room 377. But you already know that, you've been there before," Dr. Lieberman is saying. He gestures toward the far end of the corridor. "Not often enough, perhaps, although I'm no one to talk. We're both busy professionals. "

Annie watches Lieberman turn in the opposite direction, her eyes following him as he starts up the hall. While his voice had remained neutral, that last remark had been superloaded with accusation, and she is unwilling to let it pa.s.s. He might think it is his G.o.d-given prerogative to relate his test results without climbing down off his perch to tell her what he means to do about them, but if there is some criticism he wants to level at her, then he d.a.m.n well ought to be saying it in plain English.

She starts to call out to him, but before she can utter a sound, Lieberman pauses and looks back at her, giving her a thumbs-up.

"Turnips first and always," he says, and grins. "I'd advise you to hurry. "

Then he tips her a little salute and hustles up the hall, dwindling in perspective like a motion picture character about to vanish over the horizon.

I'd advise you to hurry.

Her heart stroking in her chest, she forgets about Lieberman and whirls toward the room in which her husband lies dying.

In instant later Annie is standing at its door. Breathless, she feels like she's come running over to it at full tilt, yet has no sense of her legs having carried her from the waiting room, of physically moving from point A to point B, of transition. transition. It is as if she'd been staring at Lieberman's back one moment, and found herself here in front of the door the next, trying to stop herself from falling to pieces in spite of the death sentence that has been p.r.o.nounced upon her husband. It is as if she'd been staring at Lieberman's back one moment, and found herself here in front of the door the next, trying to stop herself from falling to pieces in spite of the death sentence that has been p.r.o.nounced upon her husband.

For his sake, trying to hold up.

She takes a deep gulp of air, another. Then she reaches for the doork.n.o.b, turns it, and steps through into the room.

The light inside is all wrong.

Odd as it may be for her to register this before anything else, it is nevertheless what happens. The light is wrong. Not exactly dim, but diffuse enough to severely limit her vision. Although she can see the foot of her husband's bed without any problem, things start to blur immediately beyond it. As if through a layer of gauze, she sees the tubes, fluid drains, and monitor wires that run to the bed, sees the outline of Mark's legs under the blankets, sees that he is resting on his back, but his face...

She thinks suddenly of those televised news reports in which someone's features are concealed to protect his or her anonymity, the sort that might involve use of a hidden camera, or show crime suspects being led toward their arraignments by the police. Pictures in which it almost looks as if Vaseline has been dabbed over the part of the frame in which the person's face ought to appear.

That is how Annie sees her husband from the doorway of Room 377 in the hospital where he will die of cancer in five months and three days. Five months, three days that have somehow collapsed into a dreadful and inexplicable now.

"Annie?"

Mark's voice is a hoa.r.s.e whisper. Its weakness shakes Annie, and for an instant she thinks she is going to burst into tears. She covers her trembling lips with her palm.

"Annie, that you?"