And now Merrill had two more guns. When he looked out the window, the old man was returning to the building holding his fat little dog. A minute later, the elevator doors opened to the ground floor, and Merrill with his bag of high-tech goodies was waiting inside, a gun pointed at the old man’s fat little belly.

The digital clock in the dashboard indicated twenty-five after ten. Merrill was coming up to the airport, the runway bathed in intense blue-white light that spilled into the car. Traffic slowed as people rubbernecked at the bulldozer and the backhoe filling a pair of dump trucks. Merrill used the light to set the computer on the passenger seat and call up the map of the city. He called Jennifer Waller’s cell phone.

“Cheers,” Scott Waller said. “Carla speaking.”

“Start talking, I have to save the battery.”

“Boss?” Waller asked. “Where are you? You’re making us nervous.”

“You go first. Who’s the us you’re talking about?”

“I’m at the boatyard with some of the big Coasties as well as the usual suspects. We’re trying to get something going for you and your wife. How is she? What do you know?”

Merrill said that while he had been allowed to talk with her and she seemed fine, events had him asking himself if the whole thing wasn’t some kind of crazy set up. “Have you been able to get anything on this Chino?”

“Not yet. Are you sure he’s Colombian?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Look, as far as set-up is concerned, a billion bucks is a lot to push to the center of the table.”

“I know. I keep telling myself the same thing. What does he get out of it? What is our uncle saying about this?”

“What you would expect. According to an unconfirmed report, as one network had it, you’ve been spotted in Colombia. The spokesperson says her department is checking it out, but it’s getting reports from all over —” Waller was still talking as headlights flashed in the rearview mirror. The white Mercedes. “You’re going to have to call me back. Let’s say midnight. We’re trying to put something of our own together.”