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“This is Master. What’s your location?”

“Thirteen miles along the Newfound Gap Road.”

“What’s your ETA at the Gap?”

There was a brief pause. “Ten mikes.”

“I’ve got what appears to be Giannini’s car in the lot. There are also—I count five personnel there. Approach unobtrusively and see if Giannini is one of them. Also keep your eye out for Riley or Lisa Cobb. If you clear all the people, I want you to check the Mustang’s plates when you get there and confirm. If it is Giannini’s car, secure the area. Also run the plates on the other cars that are parked there.”

“Roger.”

Master redialed, calling his other vehicles down in the visitors’ center and ordering them up to the parking lot in Newfound Gap.

“How much fuel do you have?” he asked Ferguson.

“About two hours worth.”

“All right. Let’s check out this area.”

8:45 a.m.

The sound of a branch snapping jabbed into Riley’s consciousness. He rolled left, ignoring the pain as a stub of the tree he was hiding behind tore through his parka and into his side. He swung the muzzle of the FA-MAS, his finger light on the trigger.

“Whoa!” Giannini yelled, holding her hands clear of her body, .44 magnum in the left hand. “I think I had the drop on you there,” she added.

Riley cursed. “Damn, Donna, you should know better than to sneak up on me like that.” He checked his watch. “How long have you been here?”

“Since five-thirty this morning.”

Riley stood, and absently felt the small wound on his side. “I told you to get here after daylight. We could have walked into each other in the dark, and that—”

“Yeah, well things happened to change the plan,” Giannini interrupted. “What did you do to your side?” she asked, walking up to him.

“It’s nothing,” Riley said.

“Right,” she said, reaching out and unzipping his jacket. “You manly men—it’s always nothing.” She reached under his fatigue shirt and peered at the scratch. “You’re right—it’s nothing.” She dropped the shirt and looked him in the eye. “Well, are you just going to stand there or what?”

Riley shifted from one foot to the other, feeling slightly foolish, draped as he was with weapons and looking somewhat grungy from his night under the stars. He reached forward and gave her an awkward hug.

“I drive all the way from Chicago and that’s all I get?” Giannini asked. She grabbed his arms and wrapped them around her. “Hold me!” The bantering was gone from her voice. “Hold me tight.”

8:50 a.m.

Lisa heard the voices the same time Hammer did. They both froze and looked at each other. Hammer put his finger to his lips, signaling for her to be silent, then picked up his rifle. He slid silently out of camp, heading in the direction of the sound. Lisa stayed in place for a few seconds, then followed, having no desire to stay alone in the middle of the woods.

She tried to move as quietly as possible, but less than ten feet out of the campsite she brushed against a branch. Hammer whirled and gestured for her to go back. Lisa shook her head firmly. Hammer again pointed back and Lisa again refused. Hammer rolled his eyes and shrugged. He continued downslope.

The voices grew closer—a man’s and a woman’s. Lisa crept up right behind Hammer’s left shoulder and peered over. Through the trees she could make out a trail cut across the mountainside about thirty feet away, the ground well worn. Whoever was making the noise was coming this way from the left. Hammer slipped the barrel of the silenced rifle over a low branch of the tree he was hiding behind.

A woman appeared first, a large backpack towering over her head. Her long blond hair flowed over the shoulder straps, and she wore brightly colored, loose-fitting pants and a worn plaid shirt. She was laughing and looking over her shoulder. Coming up the trail behind her was a tall young man with an even larger backpack. Lisa watched as the barrel of Hammer’s rifle tracked the two. Her chest constricted as she saw Hammer’s finger curl around the trigger. The two campers were now directly in front, oblivious to the death that had them in sight.

Hammer’s finger tightened on the trigger, even as the girl let out another laugh.

“No!” hissed Lisa.

The muzzle moved to the right, centered on the man’s head, and stayed there until the two disappeared around a bend in the trail. Hammer slowly pulled the weapon back in and turned to look at Lisa with a blank expression.

“You were going to kill them, weren’t you?” Lisa said quietly.

Hammer shook his head absently, as if his mind were elsewhere, and without a word led the way back to the campsite.

9:12 A.M.

“It’s Giannini’s car, but she’s not in the area.”

Master peered down at the ground, then up at the clouds, close above the blades of the helicopter. He spoke again into the portable phone. “How about the other vehicles?”

“Negative on them. Tourists.”

“Hold,” Master ordered. He dialed the number of his own command van. “Put Simon on.”

Master grimaced as the voice he had grown to hate came on. “Yes?”

“You call your boss back in Virginia and you tell him to get this road closed.”

“What?”

“I want your boss to call the fucking National Park Service and close the Newfound Gap Road in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park,” Master enunciated. “Got it?”

“Yes, but I think—”

“I don’t give a shit what you think, what you feel, what you fucking suppose, or anything,” Master snapped. “Just do it.” He hung up and glanced at Ferguson, who had not been able to hear the conversation above the sound of the aircraft and was concentrating on flying. Master recalled his men below: “Clear me a landing pad at the end of the parking lot and mark it.”

Chapter Eighteen

GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS

1 NOVEMBER, 9:50 a.m.

“What happened to my brother?”

Lisa’s first question for Giannini didn’t surprise Riley. On the way to the campsite he’d told Giannini that Lisa didn’t know how her brother died. Giannini took Lisa gently by the arm and led her a short distance away to break the grim news.

“So what now?” Hammer asked quietly.

Riley watched Lisa react to the news, throwing herself into the comfort of Giannini’s arms. “I don’t know. We’ve run as far as we can, but we can’t stay here forever.”

He told Hammer about the attack on Giannini in Chicago. He also told him about the helicopter—Hammer had heard it—adding in the fact of the weapon.

“So they know we’re here,” Hammer summarized. He glanced at the two women. “They probably followed Giannini somehow. Maybe they bugged her car, just like they did to your car at Bragg.”

“How they got here doesn’t matter,” Riley said. “What happens now is what’s critical. I could hear the helicopter hovering down near Newfound Gap for quite a while.”

“They’ll find Giannini’s car, then,” Hammer replied.

“What really bothers me,” Riley said, “is that we’ve got more people after our ass than I can count and I’m still not sure who they are.”

“If they’re nearby, why don’t we find out?” Hammer suggested.

Riley frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve got something—”

Hammer was interrupted by the two women rejoining them. There were tears on Lisa’s face, and her look indicated she was many miles away, experiencing a new grief.

Riley did the formalities of introducing Giannini to Hammer. She smiled crookedly at the older soldier. “So you’re stuck on this bus to nowhere too?”

“One big happy family,” Hammer acknowledged.

“Let’s talk this out,” Riley suggested. He sat down on his rucksack, and the others got as comfortable as they could on the ground. The sun was completely covered by clouds now, and the gray weather only deepened the gloom around the small circle. “All we have is the phone number to the Witness Protection Program, but we have to assume it’s been compromised. The Program is still showing a good status for Lisa and her husband, and we know that’s bullshit, so not only is the phone number compromised, but we also have to figure that someone has access to the Program’s computer system. That says to me it has to be someone on the inside.”

“But is that someone working for the mob?” Giannini asked. “From what you told me, you had two groups of people outside your townhouse.”

“Maybe both groups were working for the same people,” Lisa suggested. She felt numb, but was trying to focus on the conversation. “I’m sure that the Torrentinos offered a lot of money for my husband’s whereabouts.”

“Half a million dollars,” Giannini said. “But my source in the mob told me there were no freelancers involved. I don’t know who hit me in the alley, but I assume they were working for Charlie D’Angelo, because they found me through my contact, Nickie. That means they ultimately were working for the Torrentinos.”

“Not necessarily,” Riley said. “It might be that—”

“If you’d let me finish what I was gonna say,” Hammer broke in, “I might have a way we can find out who’s after us without having to yap our jaws all day.” He reached into his fatigue pants pocket and pulled out a small plastic case with a four-inch metal antenna. “I took this out of the van at Camp Mackall. I say we turn it on.”

“What?” Lisa exclaimed. “Are you crazy? I thought the whole point of coming up here was to hide out.”

“We may not be hiding as well as we’d like,” Giannini said. “My car is parked down at the Newfound Gap lot, and it won’t take them long to find it if they’re flying around here in a helicopter.”

Riley had been silent, considering the bug in Hammer’s hand. “I say we turn it on.”

Lisa looked at him as if he’d grown another head. “Are you both going nuts?”

Riley spoke calmly, in a low voice. “I hope they—whoever the hell they are—don’t know we’re up here. But we haven’t had much luck so far. Every place we’ve gone or been, they’ve shown up eventually. And usually when we didn’t expect them to. If they are here looking for us, then I say we invite them at a place and time of our choosing for once.”

Giannini nodded. “Hell, yeah. I’m tired of running.”

Riley reached into his cargo pocket, pulled out the topographic map of the area, and spread it on the pine needles. “I think we have some work to do.”

CHICAGO

1 NOVEMBER, 10:00 a.m.

Charlie D’Angelo looked at the newspaper report of the two men murdered in the alley before throwing the paper into the wastebasket next to his desk. His chief subordinates were gathered around his desk, awaiting his reaction to the news.

Charlie drummed his fingers and thought for a few seconds before speaking. “Gentlemen, the situation concerning the Torrentino brothers is most unfortunate and I sympathize with their desire to see justice done.” He pointed at the wastebasket. “But the price is getting out of control. We had a one hundred thousand dollar contract with these two gentlemen, half paid up front, and not only was the work not completed, but we have also lost our initial investment.” He twisted his Harvard ring. “In economics that is called ‘sunk cost’—an investment that cannot be recouped. The key is that you cannot throw good money after bad.” He could see a few frowns crinkle Neanderthal foreheads as they tried to follow what he was saying.

“In other words, we pissed away fifty grand and got nothing in return. We’ve been offering a half million for the Cobbs—or shall I say our associates the Torrentinos have been offering a half million. But we must realize that that money is also our money.” D’Angelo shrugged. “If we get a line on these people and can do them, fine. But we can’t waste any more resources chasing them down.”

“What about the two million Cobb skimmed?” one of them asked.

“Also sunk cost,” D’Angelo said. He checked the faces surrounding him, looking for signs of protest, for still-strong tendrils of loyalty to the jailed former bosses. He saw none. “Good. Let us move on, then.”

The men moved out—all except Roy Delpino, who sat down across the desk from D’Angelo and lit a cigar. “So what’s the real story?”

D’Angelo leaned back in his chair. “The real story is that this is turning out to be a big pain in the ass and a waste of resources. Just like I said.”

“The Torrentinos are going to be pissed,” Delpino observed.

“Fuck the Torrentinos,” D’Angelo replied with a cold smile. “I control things now and I’m tired of taking orders from prison. The Torrentinos are history.”

Delpino frowned. “You’re going to give up on the money?”

“Philip Cobb is dead.”

“What?”

“Cobb’s dead. Fastone’s dead. The only one who might know the whereabouts of the money is Cobb’s wife.”