"You fool," he growled. "You failed to hit him."

The sniper shook his head. "At this distance it is impossible to miss."

"Shoot again."

The sniper shrugged, lined up the shot and pulled the trigger. The man at the table remained immobile. "Either the target is already dead or he is in a coma. I struck him above the bridge of the nose. See the hole for yourself."

Kung Chong focused his glasses on the face of the man in the kitchen. There was a neat round hole above the bridge of the nose above the reading glasses, and it wasn't bleeding.

"Curse that devil!" Kung Chong snarled. No stealth. No orders quietly issued over his radio. He shouted wildly across the clearing in front of the cabin, "Move in! Move in!"

Men dressed in black materialized from the shadows cast by the trees and ran across the yard, past the car and burst through the front door of the cabin. They spread through the rooms like a flood, weapons at the ready, poised to shoot at the first hint of resistance. Kung Chong was the fifth man into the living room. He rushed past his men and burst into the kitchen.

"What manner of devil is he?" Kung Chong muttered as he picked up the dummy sitting in the chair and threw it on the floor. The baseball hat fell away and the reading glasses shattered, revealing a crude face hurriedly molded out of wet newspaper and painted sloppily with vegetable dyes.

Kung Chong's second in command came up to him. "The cabin is empty. No sign of our quarry."

His lips pressed together in a thin line as he nodded, not surprised by the report. He touched the transmit button on his radio and spoke a name. Lo Han's voice responded immediately.

"Report."

"He has escaped," said Kung Chong simply.

There was a moment's pause, then Lo Han said irritably, "How is it possible he sidestepped your men?"

"No one larger than a rat could have slipped through the cordon. He cannot be far away."

"Most odd. Not in the cabin, not in the forest, where could he have gone?"

Kung Chong stared out the window at the boathouse that was being searched by his men. "The lake," he answered. "He can only be on the lake."

He skirted the dummy lying on the floor and ran out the back door across the porch and onto the dock. He shoved aside his men and stepped inside the boathouse. The sailboat was hanging in its cradle, the kayaks and canoe still in their wall racks. He stood numb, aware of the enormity of his blunder, the incredible ease with which he had been deceived. He should have known, at least guessed, how the man in the cabin had slipped through his fingers.

The old boat, the Chris-Craft runabout that Kung Chong had observed earlier after a personal search of the cabin and boathouse, was missing.