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gradually getting smaller and smaller until it disappeared altogether. And then there was nothing, only silence.
    Hawker lowered the tube, perplexed. What the hell had happened? It was a heat-seeking missile, and the engines of the yacht certainly put out heat—
    Thu-BOOM!
    Far out on the horizon, maybe three miles away, there was a terrific explosion. The vigilante looked up in time to see the yacht illuminated in a corona of white light, its bow thrown high up out of the water, listing so far to starboard that, in that moment, he could see the whole top of the boat as if he were above it, and it would certainly roll over. Then there were only yellow flames, and he could see nothing else.
    But the men aboard were dead—dead or dying, no doubt about that.
    James Hawker picked up the caps of the spent rocket launcher and put them in the pack, which he now settled on his back. Then he walked quickly to his car, stored his gear in the trunk, and pulled onto the side road that would lead to the main road that would take him back to Norfolk. Driving carefully, relaxed now but shivering in the cold wool clothes, he did fifty miles an hour, just under the speed limit.
    Hawker always obeyed traffic laws. Speeding was for pimply-faced teenagers and men-children who had never grown up and for adults who lived under the illusion that driving fast was, in some frustrated way, a method of expressing their virility. Speeding is just like anger, Hawker thought, getting pissed off and wanting to fight with absolutely nothing to be gained.
    Anger was for amateurs.
    James Hawker was no amateur.

six
    Hawker was back in his hotel room, a big two-room suite with a balcony that looked out over the cold, twinkling lights of Norfolk and the dark sea beyond. He took a long, hot shower, steaming up the whole bathroom. Then he wrapped a towel around his waist, feeling warm for the first time in about a year, it seemed.
    He had gotten way too used to the sun and the heat and the balmy wind living down there on that stilthouse on the water in Everglades City, Florida. He had to toughen up, he knew that. It was way too easy down there in the land of sun and fun to end up a chubby, smiling beach bum, going through the female tourists and drinking margaritas.
    Hawker got a bottle of beer from the refrigerator in the tiny kitchenette. Bud in a bottle. He stepped down into the sunken living room and studied the dial of the phone as he settled back onto a couch covered with oversized pillows. He asked the hotel operator to get him a number in Chicago. The bottle of beer was half empty when the operator rang him back, informing him that his party was on the line.
    His party was Jacob Montgomery Hayes, his closest friend and multimillionaire associate who, when Hawker was first starting out as a vigilante, had provided financial backing and guidance. Now Hayes just provided guidance, using his staff and endless list of social and political connections to help Hawker in his work.
    Hawker had his own money now, earned not through hard work but through blind luck. He paid his own way now.
    Hayes seemed happy to hear from him, but his conversation was guarded, and he started off by saying “So how’s the weather in your part of the country, James?” This was their standard code line, and meant that Hayes’s electronic equipment was reading more than the normal amount of resistance on the phone line—meant, in other words, that someone was listening in or taping the conversation.
    Who in the hell could it be? A nosy hotel operator? Cwong’s organization? But how could they already know who he was and where he was staying? Or maybe the CIA—that was the most likely possibility. Those boys didn’t let anyone stray far from their sight.
    Hawker acknowledged Hayes’s message by answering “I don’t know anything about the weather, but the beer’s cold,” then continued, “I met our friends a little earlier