Heat Lightning

where the sea was always close and dominated the weather. Here, the nights could be both cool and soft, or warm and soft, with the air resting on your skin like a feather, scented with flowers, and without the overriding tang of salt and seaweed.
    She and Phem lay on the edge of the lake, deep in the brush, dressed all in black except for the olive-drab head nets that Tai had found in a sporting goods store. They’d be heading north after they killed Warren, and Phem had sworn that he wouldn’t go back without what he called “country equipment.”
    They had no excuse for being where they were at: if they were seen, or found, then the person who found them would die. Mai had a silenced Beretta pistol, fitted with a strap, hanging on her back; Phem had the rifle, and a pistol as well.
    Tai was four hundred meters away, where he would have a better view of the approaches to the target. Phem eased forward and sideways, moving an inch at a time, so that his face was only inches from Mai’s. “No wind,” he whispered quietly. “Look at the water.”
    The water was smooth as a piece of silk, doubling the lights across the way as shimmering upside-down reflections.
    “Perfect,” she said. They were whispering in Vietnamese.
    After another moment, he said, “I wonder what happened?”
    “Virgil must have figured something out,” she whispered. “I can’t imagine that he was there just to help with security.”
    “Maybe he was there for Warren.”
    “I don’t think so. He came so fast—he felt so urgent . . . he discovered something.”
    “If he did, do you think he took Sinclair?”
    “I don’t know. There are too many possibilities.”
     
 
THE EARBUD in Mai’s right ear clicked and she saw Phem put a hand to his ear. Mai slipped out the walkie-talkie and said, “Yes.”
    “Four cars coming, convoy.”
    “Yes.”
    Phem moved away from her, and though she couldn’t see him well, she felt him extending the rifle toward the target and then stripping off the head net. He’d bought a bag of beans to use as a rifle rest, and she heard that crunch as the forestock wiggled down into it, and a click as the safety came off. If the target appeared, there wouldn’t be much time—maybe only a second or two.
    Mai put her glasses on the house; looking through them was like watching something on a black-and-white television screen, except that the image was green-and-black. There was enough ambient light that the entire target area looked like a daylight scene.
    She took the glasses down, a bit night-blind after looking through the glasses, put the radio to her lips, clicked it once, and said, “Still coming?”
    Tai: “Yes. They will be at the turn in ten seconds.”
    She looked that way, counted, saw the headlights at the corner. She said to Phem, who was concentrating on his scope, “Headlights at the corner. I think it could be them. Here they come, they’re coming this way. One-two-three-four vehicles . . .”
    Phem was unmoving; she could see a ring of green light where it slipped past his eye from the tube inside the scope. She called it for him, whispering: “Fifty meters. Thirty meters. They’re slowing, it’s them. Ten meters, the first car turns, I think he will be in the second car, Tai says he always rides in the second car.”
    The first car drove up the driveway and went all the way to the back, where it faced a garage, but the garage doors didn’t go up—the walk from the garage to the back door of the house would be longer than the walk from a car in the driveway to the house.
    They were apparently going to minimize the exposure. . . .
    The second car turned in, pulled even with the back of the house. The third and fourth stayed in the street, one blocking the driveway.
    Two men got out of the first car and walked to the back of the house.
    Two more got out of the second car. They looked around, then the man on the driver’s side, the side closest to the house, opened the back door of the car and stood beside it.
    Warren got out and took a step toward the house, stepped just for a second out from behind the man holding the door. . . .
    Phem fired, and Mai saw a muted flash and was slapped by the loud whack, and Phem said, “Go . . .” and they were scrambling along behind the screen of bushes and Mai could hear a distant shouting and then gunfire, but couldn’t see the gun flashes and had no idea where the bullets were going. . . . They crossed the street as planned, running