Giordino sat on the ground, his eyes staring numbly at his punctured leg. He looked up at Maxine, not fully grasping what had happened. Then his mouth went slack and he watched helplessly as she deliberately ejected the spent shell and recocked the rifle. Maxine took careful aim at his chest and curled her finger around the trigger.

The blast was deafening and the slug tore the breastbone away, catapulting gore and marrow in a grisly pile at Giordino’s outstretched feet. Maxine stood inert for almost three seconds before she folded limply to the yard in a fat, grotesque heap, her blood spilling out between her breasts and staining the grass.

Pitt leaned against a porch railing, his hand wielding the Colt, barrel poised in the recoil position. He lowered the gun and walked stiffly toward Giordino. Steiger came out to look, paled, and threw up into a flowerbed.

Giordino’s eyes were locked on a gleaming white bit of cartilage as Pitt knelt beside him. “You … you blew that sweet little old lady’s chest off?” Giordino asked.

“Yes,” Pitt replied, feeling none too proud of himself.

“Thank God,” Giordino murmured, pointing. “I thought that thing on the ground belonged to me.”

44

“You fool!” Thomas Machita shouted across the desk. “You bloody fool!”

Colonel Randolph Jumana sat and regarded Machita’s outburst with controlled indulgence. “I had the very best of reasons for issuing those orders.”

“Who gave you the authority to attack that village and slaughter fellow blacks?”

“You overlook basic facts, Major.” Jumana removed a pair of hornrimmed reading glasses and stroked one side of his flattened nose. “During General Lusana’s absence I am in command of the AAR. I am simply carrying out his directives.”

“By switching attacks from military targets to civilian villages?” Machita snapped angrily. “By terrorizing our brothers and sisters whose only crime is working as underpaid civil servants for the South Africans?”

“The strategy, Major, is to drive a wedge between the whites and the blacks. Any of our people who hire out to the government must be labeled as traitors.”

“Black members of the Defence Forces, yes,” Machita argued. “But you can’t gain support by indiscriminately murdering schoolteachers, mailmen, and road laborers.”

Jumana’s face went cold and impersonal. “If killing a hundred children would advance our ultimate victory over the whites by one hour, I would not hesitate to give the order for execution.”

Machita was swept by a wave of abhorrence. “You’re talking butchery!”

“There is an old Western World saying,” Jumana said flatly. ” ‘The end justifies the means.’ “

Machita stared at the obese colonel and his flesh crawled. “When General Lusana hears of this, he will expel you from the AAR.”