“The one and only, Commander Merrill. You really are to be congratulated for having gotten so far, even with the considerable help of the late Mr. O’Malley.”

Merrill was still looking around. “I’m not done yet.”

“Oh, but you are. Remain motionless, please, and wait for someone to retrieve you.”

“My wife is all right?”

“None the worse for wear.”

Slowly Merrill unraveled the strap around the bag. “Why do I keep hearing you and your partner wise cracking about my wife?”

“He’s not my partner,” Chino’s voice said. “Would you kindly stand still, Commander Merrill?”

Merrill reached into the bag, found one of the hand grenades, and tightened his grip on it. “All right, not your partner, your girlfriend.” A mistake: a feeling of dread and a clarifying thought tumbled over each other. Proactive! Chino’s electronics weren’t strictly defensive! Merrill dove for the ground. A roar of automatic gunfire tore over his head. Branches cascaded down on him.

“You’re still trapped, Commander Merrill.”

But only under a fixed field of fire, Merrill thought. Chino’s voice was being piped through electronically, the guns, mounted in the wall somewhere, were being operated by remote control, and Chino was unable to lower them. Chino had this placed rigged like a medieval fortress, with all its weaknesses as well as strengths.

Flashlight beams lined the trees at the end of the wall. Merrill had been followed from the road. O’Malley had not been outsmarted, he had miscalculated the point at which Chino’s paranoia would kick in. O’Malley had only thought he knew what kind of a man Chino was. Merrill was getting a short but very intense course. What about Amy? Merrill wasn’t being given time to even imagine an answer: the flashlights were getting brighter. Merrill looked up at filigreed canopy overhead.

“Why did you change your mind about taking me alive?”

“I’m so glad to find that you’re just another cheap American thug, Commander. As I told Amy, I watched you with interest on CNN. You’re being used as a pawn again, as you were when you were paraded before America, a complete fraud.”

“Bullshit.”

“Mister O’Malley told you to kill me, didn’t he? Mister O’Malley worked for my enemies. You don’t think he happened to be at the airport by accident, do you? You are a very stupid man, Commander.”

Another burst of gunfire, shredding the thin foliage overhead even more. The sky opened above Merrill as if a car’s sunroof had slid open. The flashlight beams were brighter still. Those people were getting their information from Chino — who had not made his presence known to Merrill until Merrill had stepped into Chino’s field of fire. Right here.