“Wait a minute!” Collins called out breathlessly. His face was smudged with soot from the explosion and he was obviously winded from having followed Janson’s sprint. “It’s my Z-six. I’ve got the keys right here.” He held them out meaningfully, asserting the primacy of property rights.

Janson grabbed them from his hand and jumped into the driver’s seat. “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,” he replied, shoving the startled undersecretary of state out of the way. “You can come or not.”

Collins hastened over to the side, pressed the garage-door opener, and rode shotgun with Janson, who revved the motor in reverse and shot out of the garage with just a millimeter of clearance between it and the lumbering roll-up door.

“Cutting it a little close, are we?” Collins asked. His face was now drenched in perspiration.

Janson said nothing.

Using, in rapid succession, the emergency brake, the steering wheel, and the accelerator with an organist’s fluidity, Janson executed a reverse bootleg turn—a J turn—and gunned the car down the narrow macadamized roadway.

“I’m thinking this wasn’t such a smart move,” said Collins. “We’re now totally exposed.”

“The flat nets—they extend out all the way around the tip of the island, right?”

“About a half mile out, yes.”

“Then use your head. Those nets would entangle any sloop that tried to cut across them. So if the gunboat wants to gain a new line of fire on us, it’s got a very wide apex to sail around. It’s a slow-moving vessel—it just isn’t going to have enough time. Meanwhile, we keep the house itself between us and it: that’s concealment and protection.”

“Point taken,” Collins said. “But now I want you to turn onto the pocket marina we’ve got a little farther on the right. We get there, we’re out of sight. Plus we can take a motorboat to the mainland if we need to.” His voice was composed, masterful. “See that little path to the right? Turn on it—now.”

Janson drove past it.

“Goddammit, Janson!” Collins bellowed. “That marina was our best chance.”

“Best chance to get blown to bits. You imagine they won’t have thought of it? They’ll already have lobbed a time-delayed explosive device there. Think like they do!”

“Turn around!” Collins yelled. “Goddammit, Paul, I know this place, I live here, and I’m telling you—”

A loud explosion from behind them drowned out the rest of his words: the marina had been blown up. Part of a rubber dinghy was thrown high into the air and landed on the side of the road.