The recon took fifteen minutes. Then the digital gauge on Jochi’s pocket controller told him the drones were reaching the extent of their battery life. But that was all right. They had gotten everything he needed.

He and Niu brought them in.

It was nearly dawn when the men reached the mouth of the cove. As they rowed toward the pocket beach, Jochi stared eastward through rising gray curls of mist that seemed as thick and heavy as smoke. Perhaps two degrees above the horizon line, the orange-red sunlight was racing toward him like a sheet of flame over the water.

Smoke and fire, fire and smoke, he thought, unconsciously and rhythmically to the repetitive beating of the oars. Smoke and fire, fire and smoke.

The fire seemed very close now.

New York

In New York City, where it was already midday, DeBattista stood outside a Teterboro hangar under a wide-open blue sky, watching a squad of mechanics and fuelers move around the Dassault Falcon 8X they were prepping for Carmody’s flight.

He wasn’t thrilled about the bargain. Especially considering the financial hit he stood to take.

The Falcon was a stretched-out shiny long-range business aircraft he normally chartered to his biggest payers. Wall Streeters, for instance: hotshot corporate M&A types on the sell side, hedge fund and private equity guys on the buy side, with a smattering of star athletes and movie people thrown in for good measure. In the New York area you had droves of people who pissed pearls before breakfast and shit diamonds at bedtime. Toss in the high net-worthers who didn’t want the hassle and costs of maintaining private jets of their own and you had a steady cash flow.

The trijet had set DeBattista’s air transport company back fifty-eight million bucks when he added it to his fleet. Another mil or two in yearly operating expenses on top. A huge financial layout, but the profits were stupendous. DeBattista charged a hundred-thousand-dollar minimum for a nonstop to Paris, London or Berlin. For certain exclusive conveniences and amenities, he would double the price of the same trip. With the money-honey niceties in his discreet Love Cloud packages, he liked to say the sky was the limit—ha ha—depending on a client’s tastes. But you had to consider the hired help, and the right help didn’t come free.

So this latest Carmody thing had the makings of a cash catastrophe, and DeBattista thought it might be hazardous to his health, besides. But he couldn’t have refused. If not for Carmody, the Mafia lunatics would have fed his uncle alive to the pigs. Three, four years ago, was it? They had sent him a parrot to deliver the message. “Sei un uomo morto.” You’re a dead man.

Carmody had rewritten that script, given it a whole different ending. Ask any barman in Salerno or Battipaglia, he’d know the gory story.