He fired Simolzak’s Glock but was unfamiliar with its trigger pull. The round went low, causing him to curse as it whacked into the truck. Behind him, Hanson Muir was screaming, scrambling to get his body over the wall and inside the slaughter pen. The men in front of him were pressed against the trucks, calling to one another and drawing weapons. He thought he could take all of them if he had to, but most of all he wanted Deville. The asshole’s head appeared and he aimed again, this time squeezing the trigger with a slow, deliberate pressure.

He didn’t get the round off. Without warning, a burst of fire came at him from further to his left. He turned toward it, stunned. A second round, a third, steadily pulled from a rifle. He spun to the ground, still cradling his pistol as a bullet tore into his shoulder. Another round and Muir dropped just beside him, holding a ripped thigh.

“Brandonnnnn!”

“Okay, goddamn it, they brought five fucking trucks,” he muttered to no one in particular, huddling against the wall.

“Didn’t you say you knew how to improvise?” screamed Muir, looking up at him and then over at a pen full of squealing, stampeding hogs.

He quickly checked his shoulder. Lucky hit, on the outside, not much in the muscle at all. The shoulder was bleeding, but he still could move the joint. Slowly he knelt, trying to look forward again.

On the other side of the street, inside the nearly blind old woman’s hooch, Manh and Dzung lay flat on the wooden slats that made the floor. After they had eaten, Manh had reached into his pack and ordered Dzung to slip black pajamas over his working clothes. They had sat quietly for two hours after that, watching the trucks move slowly past the slaughter pens, Manh’s electric eyes counting, calculating, waiting for some magical chimera that would cause him to send Dzung into action.

When Condley screamed Deville’s name, Dzung had immediately recognized his voice. He had looked quickly to Manh, taking deep breaths to burn up some of the adrenaline that exploded inside his veins. The Interior Ministry official had merely nodded, as if agreeing that it was indeed Condley. Dzung clutched his pistol, crouching. It was going to happen, whatever it was. And then it would, at least, finally be over.

The nine men from the four trucks now stood on the road just in front of them. They were all looking the other way, toward Condley, leaning into the trucks and using them as barricades. Four of them, including the large white man, were firing pistols in the direction of the slaughter pens. Off to their right Dzung could see another man behind a different truck, shooting slowly and carefully with a military carbine, as if he were a sniper. No firing was coming from the slaughter pen where Condley had fallen.