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thought. The actual killing would be anticlimactic. Death from a distance was never as exciting as face-to-face. Still, for the pure pucker factor, it beat painting seascapes.
    He returned to his former position: legs flat and wide apart, elbows resting comfortably to support his weapon. He inhaled deeply—once, twice—and centered the scope between Bugunda’s eyes before lowering it perhaps a millimeter. A shot in the middle of the forehead was desirable but it was unlikely the man would survive any head shot.
    With the eye that wasn’t glued to the scope he watched the minute hand of his watch go straight up before he slipped off the safety and took two more deep breaths, and then a third, which he held as he gently increased pressure on the trigger.
    So intent was he on holding his aim steady he either didn’t notice or didn’t hear the gunfire or the crack of a projectile splitting the air at ten times the speed of sound. His first real awareness came with the impact of the Heckler & Koch’s recoil and the scope’s circle of blood and brains splattering onto those standing next to his target.
    He waited an extra second, watching the two men beside Moustaph drag him off the platform as though to protect him from another assassin’s bullet. As Jason dropped the rifle, his last glance toward the village took in mass confusion. Its inhabitants had either dropped to the ground or were staring stupidly at the corpse on the platform or generally getting in the way of those trying to flee. Men in uniforms were firing their weapons in every direction, including the sky. Those Jason assumed to be in command shouted orders at deaf ears as Moustaph was literally thrown into one of the jeeps, which disappeared in a cloud of red dust.
    Leaving the rifle where it was, he slipped out from under his blanket and crawled as quickly as he could to the base of a flowering magic guarri tree—a bush, actually. Its fruit was often fermented into a potent liquor and its wood was said to have magic properties, two reasons it was never used to make charcoal. At the moment it would conceal Jason’s line of retreat. A rattle of automatic-rifle and machine-gun fire ripped through the grass like wind-driven rain, snipping leaves from the maize and flattening some of the millet as though by an invisible hand. He could only hope the ill-disciplined troops were firing in every direction. Still, a random bullet could kill just as easily as one carefully aimed. Ducking his head as though to present a smaller target, he stood. Keeping the guarri in line between him and the village as best he could, he moved swiftly away on a track he had predetermined with the GPS. Even as the random gunfire began to subside, it took willpower not to break into a run. The waving of the tall grass as he crashed through would not escape the notice of even the greenest troops.
    The sound of gunfire had acted as a signal. Somewhere in front of him, Jason could hear rotor blades thumping the thick, humid air. From behind him there was the sound of engines.
    Now Jason was in a field covered with only waist-high grass and about fifty yards across. Some sort of horned animal raised its head, spotted Jason, and fled, followed by two more of its kind.
    Floating in the middle of the lake of dry grass was an old Boeing-Vertol CH-47A Chinook helicopter, the one seen on every evening’s newscast during the Vietnam War as it ferried men in and out of combat. The only difference was this one was painted black and without insignia. The payload of the Chinook had made it popular the world over for both civilian and military use. It would be as impossible to trace as the sniper’s rifle.
    Jason waded through the swaying grass, the chopper’s twin rotors, one at each end, reminding him of a pair of dragonflies mating in flight. From his right, one of the jeeps he had seen in the village emerged from the tall grass, its fifty-caliber chattering at something behind it. A lump in the