“Four is too many,” Ed said. “Just you and me are about the right number. Come on.” He led the way inside, where they found Sally shucking corn, while keeping an eye on the monitors connected to a dozen high-definition cameras, covering the house, the road, and the dock. “What’s your pleasure?” Ed asked, waving an arm at a weapons rack.

“Something with a silencer, but long enough to take them at a distance. I don’t relish close combat.”

“Not when the opposition is that young, that big, and that strong—and there’s two of them.” He handed Stone a rifle with a silencer and a banana magazine. “That holds thirty rounds,” Rawls said, “and you can set it for single fire, double, triple, or auto.”

“I think I’d like double,” Stone said, twisting the knob.

Rawls handed him an ammunition crate filled with loaded banana magazines. “If you run out of that, you’re a bad shot,” he said.

“Where do you want me?”

“There’s a firing slot cut into that wall behind you,” he said. “It will give you a wide field of fire that will overlap with mine.”

Stone found it and set up a chair, then put his rifle across it.

“Supper will be ready pretty soon,” Ed said. “I think we can rely on my security alarms until then to tell us they’re coming.”

“They managed to disarm my alarms through the computer system, to Lance’s chagrin. He thought the Agency’s system couldn’t be penetrated, but they managed it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ed said. “I don’t think my system is any better than Lance’s.”

“He’s got his people working on a way to get into their system,” Stone said. “Maybe that will be of some help to us.”

—

A few minutes later, Sally called them to supper. It was fried chicken, peas, sweet corn, and biscuits.

“Sally’s been working on cooking Southern,” Ed said. “She’s getting good at it.”

“I like it myself,” Sally said.

There was a tiny noise from somewhere. Ed stopped eating and listened for a moment. “Just the house settling a little,” he said.

“It does that sometimes,” Sally agreed.

“Ed, did you restock those rocket-launched grenades?” Stone asked. “I think we used them up the last time we were in a situation like this.”

“I’ve got three,” Ed replied. “That sort of materiel is hard to come by up here. I have to wait for out-of-town visitors.”

“Would one of those burn them out?”

“It would knock a corner off their house, but I don’t think an RPG would torch it, unless, of course, there was a propane tank involved.”

“Where is their propane tank?”

“Buried on the other side of the house.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

36

Viv, Carly, Primmy, Dino, and Lance sat in Stone’s living room, having an after-dinner cognac. Lance’s phone purred.