Maybe he is already dead. Maybe I won’t have to kill him.

Manh took a deep breath and then slapped Dzung on his back. “Now it happens!” he said fiercely, his face wild with determination. He pointed toward the trucks.

“The white man!”

Dzung had already crouched, ready to burst across the narrow road. He turned quickly to Manh. “That white man?”

“With the mustache. At the truck. Go!”

Dzung bolted from the hooch, running wildly, fired by the reality that there were five guns in front of him, that he had only seven shots in his pistol, and that Manh had trained him repeatedly to kill only one man. One man. Seven shots. Two to the chest, three to the head, two back to the chest. Shoot only the man I tell you to shoot.

Bullshit.

They were only thirty feet away, and they were looking toward the slaughter pens. He held his fire until he was within five feet of his target, then put a bullet quickly into the back of his head. The other three with pistols were less than twenty feet away. He turned to the right, quickly shooting the single man on that side, and then rolled behind one truck bed, standing up and putting two bullets apiece into the other two on his left. One in the chest, one in the head.

He had one bullet left. The men who were not shooting before were scrambling in the dirt road, trying to find the weapons that the others had dropped. Two trucks down from him, the sniper with the rifle had turned around toward him and had a bead. Dzung had enough time to raise the pistol and fire a shot that careened off the truck, near the sniper’s head, causing the man to cringe for a second.

And then he was out of ammunition.

He was in the middle of the road and had to run across it, past the slaughter pens and down the dirt trail to the river. The sniper had a free shot, and the sniper was good. Dzung crouched between two trucks, preparing to sprint for his very life, and then three shots suddenly exploded in front of him. They crossed him, left to right. He looked quickly at the far truck and saw the sniper fall.

He had no more time to think. He bolted across the road, heading for the dirt path. And as he passed the slaughter pen he saw Condley leaning against its concrete wall. Condley was bleeding from his left shoulder and grimacing, his eyes wild with anger and pain. But seeing Dzung, he held his Glock in the air as if in victory and gave Dzung a thumbs-up with his left hand as the cyclo driver raced down the dark path toward the river.