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even though the blade wouldn’t have touched him because he couldn’t be more than five-feet-six. The Dutchwoman still didn’t move. Marcus could tell she was talking to Dominick, but he couldn’t hear a thing over the whirling rotor blade. He realized that she was the boss, she was the one giving the orders. The two men were frightened and it showed. She was frightened but it didn’t show. She was the leader.
    Marcus slipped out of the cover of the jungle. He ran, bent low, to the far side of the helicopter. It was white, and painted on its side, just behind the cabin, lettered in bright green, was
Bathsheba.
    Its rotor was whipping wildly around, churning up the bushes and the plants, causing enough of a visual diversion, Marcus hoped. He waited just behind the cabin, out of sight of the pilot. He saw the woman,Tulp, nod to the Dutchmen, then calmly turn back to Dominick and raise her 9-mm automatic. He heard her then, yelling at Dominick, “You bloody rotten bastard,” and just as she raised the 9-mm to fire, Marcus leapt from behind the helicopter, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The bullet barely grazed her right wrist. The sound was like the popping of a toy gun over the noise of the whirling blade. The woman whipped around, and Marcus saw that blood was pouring out of her wrist, but she hadn’t dropped the gun and it was now pointed at him. He clamped his jaws together, and within an instant two bullets ripped through her chest. She stood there, her mouth open, surprise in her eyes, and then she fell, slowly, heavily, her legs folding, onto the ground.
    The two Dutchmen were running, screaming, but Marcus didn’t fire at them. He watched Merkel take both of them down, slamming Koerbogh in the jaw and Van Wessel in his fat stomach. The helicopter pilot, no fool, lifted off. Marcus raised his automatic rifle and carefully aimed. He stopped.
    He heard Dominick call out to him, “Bring him down, Marcus.”
    But he shook his head. Slowly Marcus lowered the rifle. He couldn’t do it; he couldn’t bring down the helicopter and kill the pilot. It wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t a dispassionate, cold-blooded killer, not like Dominick Giovanni.
    He hurried back to Dominick. He was smiling, his hand still pressing over the wound in his upper arm. Had Marcus imagined his order?
    “Thank you, Marcus,” Dominick said in his aloof, polite voice. “I wasn’t too worried, well, not until the very end there. The bitch was going to kill me,” he added, amazement in his voice. “And I don’t even know why. You’d think she would have told me, wouldn’t you?”
    “What the hell happened?” As he spoke, Marcuspulled Dominick’s hand from his arm. He ripped open the sleeve and looked at the wound. “The bullet went through, thank God. I think I can handle this. We don’t need to call in Haymes.”
    Dominick nodded, and Marcus, for the first time, saw the strain on his face. He watched Dominick pull himself together. “The servants are all locked in the cellar. Coco is tied to a chair in the cabana. Our twelve men, every last one of them, are unconscious in the dining room. Koerbogh gassed them. Quite efficiently, I might add—knocked them out within seconds. I’m familiar with the stuff they used. Invented by the Chinese. The men will be coming out of it in about four hours.”
    “And Paula had already left for the resort?”
    “Yes.”
    “You can tell me more about it later. Come in now and lie down. I’ll see to things.” He called over to Merkel, who was standing over the two unconscious Dutchmen, “Tie up those hyenas and we’ll question them in a little while.”
    “Right,” Merkel called back, and picked up the two men, one under each arm, and half-dragged them toward what was called the tool shed but was in reality a place to store people also.
    “Marcus! Watch out!”
    Marcus whirled about to see the woman, Tulp, come up on her side, blood streaming out of her chest and mouth, the 9-mm automatic