Sonny swallowed and tried to formulate an answer. Frank Knox was no deluded redneck with grandiose fantasies. Though largely self-educated, he was a tactical genius. He’d led successful assaults on Japanese positions that Marine officers had declared impregnable, and he had the medals to prove it. With Sonny and Glenn working under him, Frank had carried on a lucrative trade in Japanese trophy skulls right under the noses of the MPs—and he was his own supplier. If Frank was thinking about killing Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, those men were already in mortal danger.

While Morehouse jabbered in bewilderment, Frank took the long barbecue fork and added letters before each of the K’s in the sand. JFK. MLK. RFK. Then he drew an X over JFK, looked up, and said, “One down, two to go.”

After Sonny remembered to breathe, he cleared his throat. “How do you propose we get those guys, Top? We going to Atlanta and D.C.?”

Frank gave him a serene smile. “No need. We’re gonna do it the same way the Jap snipers killed us on the islands. Think about it. They never shot to kill with their first round. They always wounded somebody. They let him lie out there yelling in agony until somebody decided to save him. Then the sniper shot that poor son of a bitch. And on and on until we finally pinpointed his position and called in the arty on his ass.”

Sonny instantly grasped the elegance of this plan, and its real possibility of success. Morehouse, of course, still looked mystified.

Frank gave the big man the look of forbearance he’d give a slow child and said, “Imagine it’s 1936, Glenn. You want to assassinate Hitler. You don’t try to kill him in his bunker, do you? You get him out in the open.”

“I hear you. But how, though?”

Frank sighed wearily. “I don’t know … maybe you run over Max Schmeling in a car. Schmeling has just beaten Joe Louis on American soil, so Goebbels organizes a state funeral. Hitler’s gotta show, right? And that’s where you’re set up, waiting with a long rifle.”

“Sweet,” said Sonny, as understanding finally dawned in Glenn’s eyes. “We bring the targets to us. But who’s going to be our Max Schmeling?”

Frank clucked his tongue. “I been studying on that. There’s no rush. Mississippi’s gonna be popping for the next couple of years, and I guarantee you’ll see both King and Kennedy sticking their noses in here before long.”

“Just like JFK did at Ole Miss in sixty-two,” Sonny said.

“Hell, that was mostly Bobby, even then.”

“Is Brody Royal up for this kind of thing?”