to change?'
'No.'
'That's good,' Duncan said. 'I like the status quo, very much, and I'm glad you do too. It benefits all of us. No reason why we can't all get along.' He got up, leaving the bag of peas on the table, a little meltwater beading on the wax. He said, 'You three stay here. My boys will look after you. Don't attempt to leave the house, and don't attempt to use the phone. Don't even answer it. The phone tree is off-limits tonight. You're out of the loop. Punishments for non-compliance will be swift and severe.'
Then Duncan put his parka on, awkwardly, leading with his left hand, and he stepped past the guy with the Remington and headed for the front door. The others heard it open and close and a minute later they heard the Mazda drive away, the sound of its exhaust ripping the night air behind it.
* * *
Mahmeini's man drove the Cadillac south on the two-lane, five gentle miles, and then he turned the lights off and slowed to a walk. The big engine whispered and the soft tyres rustled over the pavement. He saw the three old houses on his right. There was a light burning in one of the downstairs windows. Beyond that, there were no signs of life. There were three vehicles parked out front, vague moonlit shapes, all of them old, all of them rustic and utilitarian pick-up trucks, none of them a new blue Chevrolet. But the Chevrolet would come. Mahmeini's man was absolutely sure of that. Half of Rossi's attention was fixed on leapfrogging Safir and Mahmeini himself, which meant the other half was fixed on securing his rear. His relationship with the Duncans had to be protected. Which meant his boys would be checking in with them often, calming them, stroking them, reassuring them, and above all making sure no one else was getting close to them. Standard commonsense precautions, straight out of the textbook.
Mahmeini's man rolled past the end of the Duncans' driveway and U-turned and parked a hundred yards south on the opposite shoulder, half on the blacktop, half on the dirt, his lights off, the big black car nestled in a slight natural dip, about as invisible as it was possible to get without a camouflage net. There would be a dull moonlit glow from some of the chrome, he figured, but there was mist in the air, and anyway Rossi's boys would be looking at the mouth of the driveway ahead of their turn, not at anything else. Drivers always did that. Human nature. Steering a car was as much a mental as a physical process. Heads turned, eyes sought their target, and the hands followed automatically.
Mahmeini's man waited. He was facing north, because on balance he expected Rossi's boys to come from the north, but it was always possible they would come from the south, so he adjusted his mirror to get a view in that direction. The mist that was helping to hide him was fogging his rear window a little. Nothing serious, but an approaching car with its lights off might be difficult to see. But then, why would Rossi's boys be driving with their lights off? They were three-for-three on the night, and therefore probably very confident.
Five miles north the orange glow of the gasoline fire was still visible, but it was dying back a little. Nothing burns for ever. Above the glow the moon was smudged with smoke. Apart from that the night-time landscape lay dark and quiet and still and uneventful, like it must have done for a century or more. Mahmeini's man stared at the road ahead, and saw nothing.
He waited.
Then he saw something.
Way ahead and off to his left he saw a blue glow in the mist, a high round bubble of light, moving fast from west to east. A car, coming in at him at a right angle, aiming to hit the two-lane a mile or two north of him, aiming to turn either left and away from him, or right and towards him. He took his gun from his pocket and laid it on the passenger seat next to him. The moving bubble of light slowed, and stopped, and started again, and flared bright. The car had turned right, towards him. Immediately he knew it was not the Chevrolet. The way the light moved told him it was too small, too low, too nimble. Porsches and Ferraris in Vegas moved the same way at