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Mizmar’s sleepy voice, urging Roy to stare at the wand and feel the light and then to close his eyes and still see the light through his eyelids, and in less than a minute Roy was really and truly hypnotized. It was like being awake but sleeping somehow, frozen in a half-dream, in-between state, and it felt good. Felt right somehow. When the voice suggested it was snowing, Roy looked around, delighted—he’d never seen snow—and then set about dusting the big wet flakes from his shoulders. The laughter of the crowd was like the sound of flowing water or the crying of distant gulls, and when the voice told him to wake up at the sound—a sharp hand clap—he tried resisting. Wanted to stay in the between world, where sleepy voices made it snow.
    Roy still has his “between” moments and this is one of them. Sitting in the air-conditioned cab of their new Dodge Ram, Dug nods off as they wait, and Roy studies the shimmeringwaves of heat that rise from the white runway. Makes the air look like pulsing, transparent jelly. With that and the regular sound of Dug breathing heavy through his nose, Roy can almost hear the drone of the Amazing Mizmar’s voice, he can almost see through the heat-shimmered air into some other place.
    Almost but not quite, because Ricky Lang pulls him back into the big bad world. Yanks open the door and pokes Roy with an index finger that feels like a warm steel rod in the ribs.
    “Wake up,” says Ricky.
    “I wasn’t sleeping,” says Roy. “I’m keeping watch.”
    Ricky, studying him from behind his mirrored sunglasses. Nodding to himself. “Uh-huh. Whatever. What you watching for, Roy?”
    “Like you said. A plane.”
    Ricky’s face untightens, and he smiles with just his lips. “Good. The specific aircraft we’re expecting, that would be a Beechcraft King Air 350. Twin turboprops. Color, green and silver. Tail number ends in seven, my lucky number.”
    “Yes, sir,” says Roy. He’s tried nudging Dug, but Dug is deeply asleep, and he’s worried about how it looks, his brother snoozing while the boss is giving instructions.
    “Leave him be,” Ricky suggests. “Don’t matter if he sleeps through the end of the world. This is on you, not your retarded brother.”
    “Dug ain’t retarded.”
    “Whatever’s wrong with him, that’s not my concern. You got the Glock?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And you know how to fire it? How to get the safety off, rack a bullet into the chamber, all that?”
    Roy nods. He’s pretty sure he knows all that.
    “Good,” says Ricky. “Then you know how to leave the safety on, how not to fire it.”
    “What’re you saying?” Roy asks.
    “I’m saying the gun is for show. Don’t shoot nobody is what I’m saying.”
    “Okay,” says Roy. “I won’t.”
    “Good. Little while, the aircraft will circle the field. It will land from the east, over there,” Ricky says, indicating where the long runway blends into the low scrub pine. “It will taxi to us. First thing you do, when the engines shut down, you come around from behind and put the chocks under the wheels. Think you can do that?”
    “I guess.”
    “Make sure you come at it from the back of the plane, behind the wing, so you don’t get your fool head cut off by the props.”
    “Okay.” Roy files it away, the propellers are dangerous, watch out for the props.
    “You just follow my lead,” Ricky says. “Wheels chocked, okay? Next, we get the passengers out of the aircraft. There’s a little door unfolds in the tail, that’s where they’ll exit. Don’t show the gun till their feet’re on the ground.”
    “How many passengers?” Roy asks, just to show that he’s always thinking.
    “One or two,” Ricky says, indifferent to the question. “Whatever, you just hold the Glock on ‘em. Don’t say nothing, just look like you mean it. Don’t let ‘em go back in the plane but don’t shoot ‘em. I’m doing all the shooting.”
    Roy follows Ricky to his BMW, parked nearby. Dirt