For his preliminary recon, Asmador changes into a light-colored, green-and-tan camo jumpsuit. Loping silently up the path through the woods, he refuses to be distracted by the way the forest keeps bursting into flames on either side of the path, the fresh young spring leaves dancing with pale green fire, the shafts of sunlight burning like golden pillars.
Eventually the path widens out into a one-lane dirt road with a two-story, wood-and-glass building on the left and a steaming, open-air pool farther ahead on the right. Coming directly toward him down that road is a golf cart with a striped canopy. A cart being driven by-and here an eidetic image of a blown-up fragment of text from the Book flashes through Asmador’s mind as he ducks into the bushes by the side of the path-a huge fat guy wearing a loud sport coat and one of those stupid little checked hats with feathers in the brim.
Fat guy, loud jacket, checked hat-the realization scarcely has time to register before the driver pulls the cart off the road and hurries into the two-story building with the slanting roof.
Asmador can scarcely believe his luck. All three of his surviving enemies-Dr. O, Epstein, Pender-gathered in one place for his convenience. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, he tells himself-surely all hell must have been brought to bear to bring this about. And why? For the same reason he and the husband-and-wife team of bow hunters had converged on that lonely rest stop last night: to ensure that his mission will be carried out.
Asmador’s first inclination is to wait for Pender to emerge again, then put an arrow through him. But crouching in the bushes with his laminated bow drawn and a carbon-shafted arrow nocked, Asmador has time to mull over the probable consequences. Sure, he could kill Pender easily enough from here (unless he misses his shot: there is always that possibility). But that would put the other two on alert, and soon the place would be crawling with cops. Maybe he’d get a second shot from cover at either Epstein or Dr. O during the confusion, maybe he wouldn’t; maybe he’d have time to make it back to the Cherokee, maybe he wouldn’t.
But the powers below haven’t gone to all the trouble of arranging this miraculous confluence in order to have him pick off one victim at the cost of losing the other two, Asmador decides. No, it would be better to-
A scratching, scurrying sound breaks Asmador’s train of thought. He wheels, draws back the bowstring, aims downward at a forty-degree angle, and releases the arrow in one smooth, continuous motion. It sizzles through the shimmering, green-and-gold-dappled air and with a solid thwack! pins something furry, a large chipmunk or a small squirrel, to the base of a tree with mossy gray bark a good ten or fifteen yards away.
Or maybe missing isn’t always a possibility, Asmador tells himself as he approaches the still twitching critter. By the time he reaches it, the light has drained from its eyes. The little body looks like an empty sack of fur-the arrow, rated for a much larger mammal, has done an astounding amount of damage.
“Ouch,” Asmador squeaks aloud, as if speaking for the tiny creature-for him, that’s about as close to empathy as it gets.