Merrill didn’t want to let his imagination range that far. She was in the hands of mercenaries? That was trouble enough. “You did business with this guy?”

“He was my banker. The best. He’s the reason my money is in the Bahamas. Squeaky clean, too.”

“And you want me to kill him for you.”

“You got it, pal. I’ll have had a much better shot at growing old with him dead.”

Ahead, under a heavy layer of clouds, a long, gray-green shadow was beginning to spread from one edge of the horizon to the other. “What’s that?”

“Cuba. In the old days I used to fly over it at tree-top height almost every night. But that was coming the other way, more or less with Castro’s permission. With all their shortages and cutbacks, I think we can do it this way – - even though we are on the other side now more ways than one.”

Merrill gestured toward the other plane – or where the radar said it was. “That may tell us something.”

“Not really. The Latin world functions on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And Chino never trusted me that much. There are other considerations. They burned a lot of fuel getting up there. When we get on the other side of the island, I’m going to have to back off as much as I can without losing track of them. As it is, I’m going to be down to fumes getting to Panama City.”

As if he could read Merrill’s mind, he said, “You’re getting off in Cartagena. Chino’s home base. The oldest port in the Americas. Where the conquistadors shipped the gold of the Incas back to Spain. The Incas cursed us with cocaine, said we’d destroy ourselves with it. A cheap call. It was the drug they used to keep their own people in line.”

Merrill was still thinking of Amy’s situation right now. The last he had seen of her, a towel over her head, being hustled into the DH-125. Why do you want to go into the Coast Guard, Sam? He liked to sail, or thought he did, reading all the books, hitchhiking the Puget Sound when he was fourteen, before he met her, to mooch rides on daysailers to confirm what he felt about himself, what was different and – - he hoped – - special. It was what had drawn her to him, that he wanted to be more a beer-sucking, foul-mouthed country dog sniffing after free pussy from the worst barhogs of the frozen asshole of North America. She had had ambitions of her own, a need to spread her own wings and see what she could of the world. The deal between them was done way back then, the two of them hardly more than children, partners, collaborators and conspirators forever. And now here she was, in the worst trouble of her life, and who had brought it upon her.