Worth Dying For

opted to try Jacob Duncan’s place first. A logical choice, given that Jacob was clearly the head of the family. They backed off the fence a couple of paces and walked parallel with it to a spot opposite Jacob’s kitchen window. The bar of yellow light coming out of it laid a bright rectangle on the gravel, but it fell six feet short of the base of the fence. They climbed the fence and skirted the rectangle, quietly across the gravel, Cassano to the right, Mancini to the left, and then they flattened themselves against the back wall of the house and peered in.
    No one there.
    Mancini eased open the door and Cassano went in ahead of him. The house was silent. No sound at all. No one awake, no one asleep. Cassano and Mancini had searched plenty of places, plenty of times, and they knew what to listen for.
    They slipped back out to the yard and retraced their steps. They climbed back into the field and walked north in the dark and lined up again opposite Jasper’s window. They climbed the fence and skirted the light. They flattened themselves against the wall and peered inside.
    Not what they expected.
    Not even close.
    There was only one Iranian, not two. There was no happy conversation. No smiles. No bourbon toasts. Instead, Mahmeini’s man was standing there with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other, and all four Duncans were cowering away from him. The glass in the window was wavy and thin in places, and Jacob Duncan’s urgent voice was faintly audible.
    Jacob Duncan was saying, ‘We have been in business a long time, sir, based on trust and loyalty, and we can’t change things now. Our arrangement is with Mr Rossi, and Mr Rossi alone. Perhaps he can sell direct to you, in the future, now that Mr Safir seems to be out of the picture. Perhaps that might be of advantage. But that’s all we can offer, not that such a thing is even ours to offer.’
    The little man said, ‘Mahmeini won’t take half a pie when the whole thing is on the table.’
    ‘But it isn’t on the table. I repeat, we deal with Mr Rossi only.’
    ‘Do you really?’ the little man asked. He changed his position and stood sideways, and raised his arm level with his shoulder, and closed one eye, and tracked the gun slowly and mechanically back and forth, left and right along the line of men, like a great battleship turret traversing, pausing first on Seth, then on Jasper, then on Jonas, then on Jacob, and then back again, to Jonas, to Jasper, to Seth, and then back again once more. Finally the gun came to rest aimed square at Jonas. Right between his eyes. The little man’s finger whitened on the trigger.
    Then simultaneously the window and the little man’s head exploded, and the crowded room filled with powdered glass and smoke and the massive barking roar of a .45 gunshot, and blood and bone and brain slapped and spattered against the far wall, and the little man fell to the floor, and first Mancini and then Cassano stepped in from the yard.
    After less than an hour the two football players were thoroughly bored with sitting in the dark. And not just bored, either, but unsettled and a little anxious, too, and irritated, and exasperated, and humiliated, because they were very aware that they were being beaten on a minute-to-minute basis, and being beaten on any basis did not come easy to them. They were not submissive people. They never came second. They were the big dogs, and being denied heat and light and NFL highlights was both insulting and totally inappropriate.
    One said, ‘We have a shotgun, damn it.’
    The other said, ‘It’s a big basement. He could be anywhere.’
    ‘We have a flashlight.’
    ‘Pretty weak.’
    ‘Maybe he’s still unconscious. It could be an actual fault, and we’re sitting here like idiots.’
    ‘He has to be awake by now.’
    ‘So what if he is? He’s one guy, and we have a shotgun and a flashlight.’
    ‘He was a soldier.’
    ‘That doesn’t give him magic powers.’
    ‘How would we do it?’
    ‘We could tape the flashlight to the shotgun barrel. Go down, single file, like they do in the movies. We’d see him before he sees us.’
    ‘We’re not supposed to kill him. Seth wants to do that himself, later.’
    ‘We could aim low. Wound him in the legs.’
    ‘Or make him surrender. That would be better. And he’d have to, wouldn’t he? With the shotgun and all? We could tape him up, with the tape we use for the flashlight. Then he couldn’tmess with the power again. We should