were attacking from there: I could see the bursts of orange flame out beyond the stubble, star-shaped flashes that winked and were gone. I got a quick vision of guerrillas trickling down out of the hills, drawn to the generator's Saturday-night drumming, come down to kill.

     Bullets thumped the turf halfway up the knoll.

     Four more vigilantes, then three more, ran from around the back side. They took cover where they could find it, and began firing over the stubble. Correon left the cottage and started around the side of the knoll. I watched him until he was out of sight. When I looked again, one of the vigilantes was on his back, mouth agape, staring at the sky with eyes that didn't blink.

     The door opened. Orlando said, “Time to go.”

     “Yeah, I think I've seen enough for one night,” Dalzell said. He stood up to leave, and a bullet shattered the window above Baby, spraying glass across the sala.

     “The lights,” Orlando said. “Stay down, are you crazy?” He reached around to hit the switch, and the sala went black.

     We moved low in the darkness, scuffling blind. The buffet table got bumped hard. Platters crashed to the floor. Dalzell and Penney were out first, and I followed them into the moonlight. Baby got to the door and said, “Shit, my gun,” and duckwalked in again.

     Nonoy came out. He sat with his back against the door post. His tension had resolved itself into something else: he seemed almost distant. There might have been no gunfire, no guerrillas. I watched him for a few seconds before he noticed me. He said, “Don't worry. Soon this will all be over.”

     It sounded absurd at the time. I wondered if he was quietly losing his grasp.

     Orlando was at the Mercedes, shouting into the radio mike. The firing was louder, hammering of AK's and hard pops of M-16's; the pops were closer than they had been, more insistent. The blister of light pulsed in the sky above