Spring Break had swallowed the city whole. Daytona Beach was running hotter than hell and twice as loud, Atlantic Avenue packed bumper to bumper with Camaros, Mustangs, Trans Ams, Corvettes and anything else capable of carrying too many people with too much beer. Girls in bikinis sat on door frames with their legs hanging outside. Guys in mirrored sunglasses stood through open T-tops waving cans at strangers. Every motel balcony had become a party, every swimming pool a nightclub, every parking lot somewhere to fall in love, start a fight, lose a wallet or wake up the following morning with absolutely no idea where your shoes had gone.

Boom boxes competed with car stereos. Van Halen fought Kenny Loggins. Prince fought Cyndi Lauper. Fireworks cracked illegally over the Atlantic while police cruisers crawled uselessly through traffic and officers shouted warnings nobody intended to obey. Daytona had surrendered days ago. It was Spring Break. Nobody came here to care.

The Paradise Palms rose above all of it, fourteen floors of pink-painted concrete, turquoise balcony rails and unapologetic Florida excess, built opposite the beach and crowned by an enormous fluorescent sign visible from miles offshore. PARADISE PALMS burned in twelve-foot pink letters edged in turquoise, a giant electric palm leaning over the name with green fronds that flickered whenever the wind came hard off the Atlantic. The sign was ridiculous, magnificent and impossible to mistake for anything except 1984.

On the fourteenth floor, Leonard Krane was waiting to sell a man’s empire.

Krane stood behind a closed curtain and watched the street through a gap barely wide enough for one eye. He was fifty-three, five feet ten, gray hair swept straight back and a white shirt dark beneath the arms despite air-conditioning cold enough to hang meat. His jacket lay across a chair. His tie had been removed almost an hour earlier. A stainless-steel Smith & Wesson rested on the coffee table beside an untouched Scotch, and beside that sat the reason twenty armed men occupied the upper half of the Paradise Palms.

A black Zero Halliburton briefcase.

Krane looked at it, then at his watch. 11:39 p.m. Thirty-six minutes. Thirty-six minutes until the helicopter. Thirty-six minutes until the Drug Enforcement Administration took possession of Leonard Krane, one briefcase and nearly seventeen years of Vincent Morelli’s business. Names. Routes. Banks. Airstrips. Politicians. Customs officers. Ships. Numbers. Dates. Managua. Panama. Cartagena. Havana. Miami. Enough ink to set half the Caribbean on fire.

Behind him, Jack Renner checked the cylinder of a Colt Python. Renner was six-two and thick around the neck, former Marine, thirty-nine years old, flat-top haircut and a face that looked as though somebody had attempted to carve Clint Eastwood using a hammer. He was being paid twenty thousand dollars to keep Leonard Krane alive until midnight, another twenty if Krane reached the helicopter.

Renner snapped the cylinder shut and looked toward the curtain. “Stop looking out the window.”

Krane ignored him.

Renner crossed the suite and pulled the curtain closed. “I said stop.”

Krane looked at him. “I heard you.”

“Then listen.”

“I’ve been listening to people like you for seventeen years.”

Renner smiled without humor. “And tonight you paid twenty of us.”

“Nineteen.”

“Twenty including me.”

Krane stared at him before exhaling through his nose. “Fine.”

Renner walked toward a hotel floor plan taped across the dining table. Two men covered the lobby. Two more watched the parking deck. Four controlled the elevators. Two covered the eastern stairwell, another two the western. Four held thirteen. Two stood outside the suite. Hollis had the roof, a Remington 700 and a radio. Renner tapped the plan with one thick finger. “Nobody gets upstairs without us knowing.”

Krane lifted the Scotch. His hand shook enough for ice to knock against glass. “You don’t understand Morelli.”

“I understand bullets.”

“No.” Krane drank. “You understand men.”

Renner looked at him.

Krane lowered the glass. “Morelli hires things.”

Outside, several hundred college students screamed as somebody drove a Volkswagen Beetle directly into the hotel swimming pool.

Neither man looked.

Downstairs, the Paradise Palms night manager was having a nervous breakdown. A red Pontiac had mounted half the pavement outside the entrance and two girls wearing matching DAYTONA ’84 shirts were dancing on its hood while he shouted at people who had already stopped listening. A bellboy pushed a luggage cart around the Pontiac, nearly clipped a man carrying a surfboard, swore under his breath and then almost collided with a figure dressed entirely in black.

The bellboy stopped.

The figure was tall and lean beneath layered black combat clothing, powerful through the shoulders without the bulk of a bruiser. A deep hood shadowed a matte-black mask that revealed nothing of the face beneath. Its only features were twin crimson lenses that seemed to burn whenever they caught the light. A long black coat moved softly around the legs, absorbing the hotel’s pink and blue glow rather than reflecting it.

At one hip rested the lacquered scabbard of a long combat sword.

Beneath the coat, a compact Beretta 84 Cheetah rode tight against the body.

The bellboy swallowed and pointed toward the lobby. “Uh, elevators are through there.”

The figure walked past.

The bellboy watched for a second, decided that Spring Break had produced stranger guests and continued pushing his cart.

Reza “Backmask” Al-Haroun entered the Paradise Palms unnoticed.

That was the first mistake.

The second belonged to Warren Pike.

Pike stood near the elevators wearing a Hawaiian shirt over a shoulder holster and pretending to read the Daytona Beach News-Journal. Beside him, Sonny Price pretended to sleep in an armchair. Both men saw Reza immediately. Neither reacted until the black figure crossed the tiled lobby toward them without slowing.

Pike lowered the newspaper. “Hotel’s full.”

Reza stopped.

Pike smiled. “Private floors tonight.”

The crimson lenses looked at him.

Price opened his eyes, stood and reached beneath his jacket.

The Beretta appeared so quickly Pike never saw where it came from. A single shot punched Price backward into the armchair as though he had simply changed his mind about standing. A dark hole appeared above his right eyebrow.

Pike’s mouth opened.

Reza crossed the distance before sound came out.

The Fairbairn knife slid beneath Pike’s ribs with one short movement. Pike stiffened, eyes bulging, and Reza held him upright for a moment almost courteously before lowering him behind the newspaper stand. The lobby remained alive around them. A group of students ran past carrying an inflatable shark. A girl screamed because somebody had thrown her into a fountain. Nobody saw the body.

The elevator opened with a soft electronic chime. Reza stepped inside, pressed four and stood motionless as the mirrored doors closed across the chaos of the lobby. For a moment the crimson lenses caught their own reflection in brushed steel, two points of red suspended in black. Then the elevator began to climb.

On the fourth floor, Dave Sallow was complaining about the music. “I swear to Christ, if I hear that fucking song one more time...” He stopped when the elevator chimed.

Beside him, Mickey Torres straightened. Both men carried MAC-10s under lightweight jackets. Torres glanced at the indicator and asked, “Who called it?”

Sallow shook his head.

The doors opened onto an apparently empty elevator.

Sallow looked at Torres, then stepped closer. “Some drunk asshole.” He leaned inside and checked left, then right.

A gloved hand dropped from above the door frame.

Reza fell from the service hatch and landed behind them. The Fairbairn drove down through Sallow’s shoulder before he understood somebody was there. Sallow screamed. Torres ripped out the MAC-10 and fired.

Reza kicked Sallow directly into the burst.

The weapon hammered the corridor. Sallow jerked under the impacts, blood and fabric snapping from his back as Torres realized too late that he was killing his own man. Reza came through the collapsing body, caught Torres by the gun wrist and throat and drove him into the brushed-steel wall of the elevator.

Once.

Twice.

On the third impact the mirror cracked behind Torres’s skull.

Reza released him and Torres folded to the carpet.

Sallow was still alive. Barely. He crawled across the floral pattern leaving a widening smear of red and stretched toward the MAC-10 lying several feet away. Behind him the elevator doors began to close. Reza stepped inside and watched through the narrowing gap.

Sallow reached the gun.

The doors met his neck.

They opened automatically.

Sallow gasped.

They closed again.

Opened.

Closed.

When they opened the third time, he no longer moved.

Reza pressed six.

At 11:47 p.m., Renner’s radio crackled upstairs. Hollis’s voice came through from the roof. “Hollis to Renner.”

Renner lifted it. “Go.”

“Pike’s not answering.”

Renner looked at Krane. Krane stopped drinking.

“Price?”

“Nothing.”

Renner pressed transmit. “Four, status.”

Static.

“Fourth floor, report.”

Nothing.

Krane whispered, “He’s here.”

Renner turned toward him. “Who?”

Krane looked at the briefcase.

Renner grabbed his arm. “Who?”

Krane swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Nobody does.”

On six, Lester Broome stood beside a glowing Pepsi machine with a pump-action shotgun held across his chest. His partner was in room 604 using the bathroom. Broome heard the elevator and raised the shotgun before the doors opened.

Nobody stood inside.

Broome remained perfectly still. “Come on.”

Nothing.

He took one step sideways, keeping the shotgun trained on the empty box, and caught a shape in the reflection of the vending machine behind him.

He spun.

Reza kicked the shotgun barrel upward.

The blast tore a crater through the ceiling and filled the corridor with plaster dust. Reza drove an elbow into Broome’s face. He staggered backward into the Pepsi machine and fired from the hip.

The shotgun blast tore through the machine.

Cans ruptured inside it. Brown foam exploded across the corridor, spraying the carpet, the wall and Broome himself. He screamed and swung the shotgun like a club.

Reza ducked beneath it.

The sword came free.

One rising cut severed the shotgun from Broome’s control along with the hands holding it.

For a moment nothing registered. Then blood pulsed from the ruined ends of Broome’s arms and he screamed with enough force to drown out the party music leaking through the walls.

The sword moved again.

The scream ended.

Room 604 opened and Broome’s partner stepped into the corridor while fastening his belt. “Lester?”

He saw Broome.

Saw the blood.

Saw the masked figure beneath the flickering PEPSI sign.

His hand moved toward his revolver.

Reza kicked the vending machine.

The shotgun blast had already shifted its weight. Three hundred pounds of steel tipped away from the wall.

The man looked up. “No, no, no...”

The machine landed on him with a metallic crash, flattening him against the opposite wall. One ruptured Pepsi can rolled slowly from beneath it, fizzing across the carpet until it came to rest against Reza’s boot.

Reza stepped over it, wiped the sword against Broome’s jacket and returned the blade to its scabbard.

At the security desk downstairs, the night manager received the first complaint about gunfire. He listened to a woman from the sixth floor insist that somebody had fired a shotgun in the corridor and laughed nervously. “Firecrackers, ma’am. There are four thousand college students within three blocks of this building. Everything sounds like gunfire tonight.” Behind him, another firework exploded over the Atlantic. He hung up before she could answer.

On eight, nobody was laughing.

Four men waited outside the elevators with their weapons drawn. Two MP5s. One shotgun. One AR-15. They had heard enough over the radio to know something had gone badly wrong below them. The indicator climbed from six to seven, then eight.

“Here we go,” one of them whispered.

The elevator arrived.

The doors opened.

All four fired.

The elevator became a box of sparks, shattered mirrors and flying metal. The MP5s screamed. The shotgun hammered. The AR-15 chewed holes through the rear wall. Somebody shouted for them to stop and the corridor fell abruptly quiet beneath the ringing in their ears.

Smoke drifted from the ruined car.

Nobody stood inside.

One man frowned. “What the fuck?”

Above them, the ceiling hatch swung gently.

Something dropped behind the group.

The sword came out.

The AR-15 gunman began to turn and lost both his weapon and half his shoulder before the muzzle came around. Reza stepped inside the shotgunner before he could fire properly, caught the pump grip and twisted it sideways. The blast went into the wall. Reza tore the weapon free, drove the stock backward into the man’s face and fired once into a third gunman who had been raising his MP5.

The blast lifted him from his feet and threw him through the ice-machine alcove.

The fourth man opened fire.

Reza dropped behind a housekeeping cart.

Bullets shredded folded towels, punched through miniature shampoo bottles and turned tiny hotel soaps into white fragments. Twenty yards away, a guest opened his door, stared at the gunfight for less than half a second and shut it again.

The MP5 clicked empty.

The gunman froze.

Reza rose from behind the cart.

The man threw the weapon and ran.

Reza pushed the housekeeping cart after him.

Its wheels rattled over the polished floor, gaining speed. The gunman looked back just as the metal frame struck him behind the knees. His legs flew upward and he landed flat across the pile of towels.

Reza caught the cart and shoved again.

Hard.

The trolley shot toward the double fire doors at the end of the corridor with the man spread across it, screaming and clawing for anything he could grab.

The doors burst open.

Cart and gunman disappeared into the stairwell.

There was a crash from the landing below.

Then another.

Another.

Another.

Then silence.

Behind Reza, the shotgunner groaned and tried to stand.

Reza looked back.

The man lifted one bloody hand. “No.”

Reza picked up the abandoned MP5, checked it and found one cartridge still chambered.

One shot ended it.

At 11:56 p.m., Renner stopped pretending the situation was under control. He keyed the radio and ordered, “All teams collapse upward.”

Voices immediately talked over one another. Somebody demanded to know where Broome was. Somebody else said the eighth-floor elevator had been shot to pieces. Another voice reported a man going down the western stairs on a housekeeping cart.

Renner snapped, “Everybody to thirteen. Now.”

Krane paced behind him. “The helicopter.”

“Still twenty minutes.”

“Get it early.”

“It isn’t mine.”

“Then call them.”

Renner grabbed Krane by the shirt and pulled him close. “Listen to me. Whoever this is, they’re inside the building. Your helicopter is currently the easiest fucking target in Florida.”

Krane looked into his eyes. “You don’t know what this is.”

“Then tell me.”

Krane hesitated.

Renner shook him once. “Tell me.”

“I’ve heard stories.”

“About what?”

Krane’s voice dropped. “About a mask.”

Renner released him. “A mask.”

“Black.”

Renner stared.

“Red eyes.”

For the first time that evening, Jack Renner stopped smiling.

On ten, six men had converted a hotel corridor into a bunker. Two beds had been dragged from rooms and overturned across the carpet. Mattresses formed barricades. Furniture filled the gaps. Guests had been forced inside and told to lock their doors.

One man covered the elevator. Another watched the eastern stairwell. A third held the west. The remaining three crouched behind the mattresses with automatic weapons.

The elevator indicator stopped at ten.

Every barrel turned toward it.

The doors opened.

Nothing.

“Don’t move,” somebody whispered.

Nobody did.

A second passed.

Then another.

The lights died.

Darkness swallowed the corridor.

A man cursed.

Emergency lights came on a heartbeat later, bathing the floor in dim red.

One of the gunmen looked toward the back of the formation. “Where’s Jimmy?”

Nobody answered.

“Jimmy?”

A body dropped from the ceiling.

Jimmy landed between the barricades.

Everybody fired.

The corridor turned into a red-and-white strobe. Muzzle flashes lit screaming faces for fractions of seconds. Rounds ripped apart mattresses and threw stuffing through the air like snow. Men shouted at one another to stop firing, but panic had already replaced discipline.

Reza came through the confusion.

The sword caught the first rifle before it finished turning and continued through the man’s chest. The Fairbairn appeared in Reza’s opposite hand and punched beneath another gunman’s jaw. A third charged across the barricade. Reza pivoted, took him by the shoulder and belt and drove him headfirst through the plaster wall.

His upper body disappeared into room 1012.

A woman inside screamed.

Reza drew the man’s pistol from his waistband and fired twice down the corridor.

Two men collapsed.

The last gunman climbed across a mattress with a shotgun. Reza slashed through the fabric. Foam erupted between them, filling the space with white fragments. The blade continued through the mattress and into the man behind it.

He stopped.

Looked down.

Then folded into the torn stuffing.

One survivor ran.

He reached the balcony door at the far end of the corridor, kicked it open and stumbled into the Atlantic wind. Ten floors below, Daytona continued dancing as though the hotel above it had not become a slaughterhouse.

The gunman looked left.

Dead end.

Right.

Dead end.

He turned.

Reza stepped onto the balcony.

The man aimed his pistol with both hands. “Stay back!”

Reza continued.

“I mean it!”

He fired.

The round missed.

He fired again.

Reza kept walking.

The man’s back struck the railing. “What are you?”

The crimson lenses gave him nothing.

He fired again.

Click.

The man looked at the empty weapon.

Reza kicked him in the chest.

He went backward over the railing but caught it with both hands.

His pistol vanished into the darkness.

“Help!”

Reza looked down.

The man stared up. “Please.”

A black boot settled across his fingers.

He screamed as Reza applied pressure.

One finger slipped.

Then another.

Nobody below heard him.

When the last hand released, he fell through ten stories of colored light, struck a canvas awning six floors down, tore straight through it, bounced from a decorative palm tree and crashed into the hotel swimming pool.

Half the pool party cheered.

Somebody shouted, “Do it again!”

Reza went back inside.

The eastern stairwell opened onto twelve and a man waited behind it with a fire axe. He swung the instant the black mask appeared.

Reza caught his wrist.

The axe stopped inches from the crimson lenses.

The man strained against the grip.

Nothing moved.

Reza twisted.

The wrist broke with a hard internal snap.

The man screamed and released the axe. Reza caught it, buried the blade in the steel railing beside his head and drew the sword with the other hand.

The man saw the movement too late.

The sword punched through his jacket and the railing behind him, pinning him against the concrete wall.

Reza released the weapon.

The man stared down at the blade.

He was alive.

Terrified.

Pinned.

Reza continued upstairs.

The man screamed after the retreating figure, “Come back!”

Reza stopped.

The man instantly regretted speaking.

The masked head turned.

Reza walked back down two steps, closed a gloved hand around the sword’s hilt and pulled.

The man started shouting, “No, no, leave it, leave it, leave it...”

The blade came free.

His own weight carried him forward. He tumbled down the stairs, struck the first landing shoulder-first and continued rolling into darkness.

Reza wiped the sword against the man’s jacket while passing.

The thirteenth floor had become a fortress. Renner’s remaining men had overturned tables, ice machines, chairs and anything else heavy enough to stop bullets. Eight men waited with every weapon they had left.

Renner listened through his radio upstairs. “Thirteen?”

A voice answered, “Ready.”

“Do not pursue.”

“We’re not pursuing shit.”

“Wait for visual confirmation.”

“Believe me, we’re fucking waiting.”

Frank Maddrey stood near the elevator holding a grenade. Former mercenary. Rhodesia. El Salvador. Lebanon. He had killed men on three continents and had scars he enjoyed explaining to women. Maddrey looked at the others and grinned. “You boys scared of one guy?”

Nobody answered.

The elevator chimed.

Maddrey pulled the pin.

The doors opened.

Empty.

“Cute,” he said.

He threw the grenade inside.

The doors closed.

The explosion made the elevator car jump in its shaft.

Maddrey laughed and turned toward the others. “That’s how you do...”

The stairwell door exploded outward.

Reza kicked it hard enough to flatten the man covering the entrance.

Gunfire erupted.

Reza used the steel door as a moving shield while rounds hammered into it. The man trapped beneath screamed as the door was forced across him. Three shooters backed away and another changed magazines.

Maddrey reached for a second grenade.

The Fairbairn knife crossed the corridor and buried itself in his forearm.

He yelled, dropping the grenade.

It landed near his boots.

Pin still in place.

Maddrey looked at the knife, then at Reza. “Missed.”

Reza drew the Beretta.

Shot the grenade.

For a fraction of a second everybody stared at it.

Then the corridor became daylight.

The blast blew hotel doors inward, shattered framed prints and dropped ceiling tiles by the dozen. Two gunmen disappeared into smoke. Maddrey struck the ceiling and came down across an armchair hard enough to fold it beneath him.

Reza emerged through the dust.

One survivor stumbled from behind an overturned table, deaf and bleeding, pistol raised.

Reza shot him.

Another crawled toward the stairwell.

Reza stepped over him and continued.

The man looked up, surprised.

Relieved.

Then he realized something had been taken from his belt.

He looked beneath his chest.

The second grenade lay there.

Pin gone.

His face twisted. “Oh, you motherfu...”

The explosion shook the fourteenth floor.

Dust fell from the ceiling of Krane’s suite.

Krane jumped.

The two remaining guards outside the room looked at one another.

One whispered, “Jesus Christ.”

Renner drew the Python. “Inside.”

The guards entered and Renner locked the suite door.

Krane grabbed the briefcase. “Roof.”

“No.”

“The helicopter is coming.”

“The roof is open.”

“Exactly.”

“Open means exposed.”

Krane shoved the Smith & Wesson into his waistband. “You stay here if you want.”

Another impact sounded below them.

Closer.

Renner looked at the suite door.

Then at Krane.

“Fine.”

They moved.

The first guard outside the suite lasted four seconds.

The second lasted six.

One emptied half a magazine into the corridor as Reza came through the smoke. Reza disappeared behind a support pillar. The guard advanced while his partner moved right.

“Move!”

They split.

Reza stepped between them.

The sword went through the first man’s weapon and into his shoulder. The second fired.

Reza turned the wounded man into the burst.

Three rounds hit him.

Reza shoved the dying body forward and the shooter stumbled backward beneath its weight. Reza seized the front of his shirt and hurled him through the door of room 1408.

The door came off its hinges.

Inside, six college students playing a drinking game screamed as the gunman landed across their table and sent plastic cups flying.

Nobody moved.

Reza entered.

The students stared.

Crimson lenses swept across them.

One kid slowly raised his beer as though offering a toast.

Reza pulled the pistol from the gunman’s hand and walked back into the corridor.

The kid waited until the black coat vanished before whispering, “That was the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”

The gunman groaned beneath the table.

The kid looked down. “Oh shit.”

Reza reached the roof access.

Locked.

Two shots destroyed the mechanism.

Atlantic wind tore through the doorway as Reza pushed onto the roof.

The whole coast glittered below. Pink motel signs. Blue pools. White headlights. Red brake lights. Fireworks over black water. The Paradise Palms sign hummed along the eastern edge of the roof, throwing electric color across everything it touched.

Krane was halfway across the rooftop.

Renner followed him.

Hollis had abandoned his sniper position and now stood beside the helipad lights with his Remington raised. The instant he saw the roof door open, he shouted, “There!” and fired.

The rifle cracked.

Reza moved.

Concrete shattered where the round struck.

Renner drew the Python.

Reza fired the Beretta.

Click.

Empty.

Renner smiled.

Finally.

Something normal.

Something he understood.

An empty gun.

He fired.

Reza ran.

Renner fired again.

Concrete snapped beneath black boots.

Hollis chambered another round.

Reza threw the empty Beretta, not at either man, but at the nearest rooftop floodlight.

Glass exploded.

Half the roof went dark.

Hollis fired into shadow.

Missed.

Reza appeared beside him.

The sword came free.

Hollis tried to bring the rifle around.

The blade cut through the barrel.

Half the Remington spun away into darkness.

Hollis stared at what remained in his hands.

The second stroke caught him across the chest and sent him staggering backward onto the helipad.

Renner fired.

The round struck Reza squarely.

Kevlar caught most of it, but the impact turned the masked figure sideways.

Renner saw it.

Saw Reza stagger.

His grin returned. “There you fucking are.”

He fired again.

Reza ducked.

Renner advanced, the Python roaring in the wind.

A third shot.

Fourth.

Fifth.

Reza retreated between air-conditioning housings.

Renner followed. “Not a ghost now, are you?”

The sixth shot cracked across the roof.

Reza stopped.

Renner pulled the trigger again.

Click.

His grin disappeared.

Reza tilted their head.

Renner looked at the revolver, then back toward the crimson lenses. “Oh.”

The sword came around.

Renner blocked with the Python.

Steel struck steel and the revolver flew from his hand.

Renner punched.

It connected.

The mask snapped sideways.

He hit again.

Reza gave ground.

Renner drove a knee into Reza’s ribs, grabbed the coat and threw the assassin across an air-conditioning unit.

Reza hit hard.

Renner charged.

Reza rolled aside and Renner’s fist punched into aluminum, caving the housing.

He turned.

The Fairbairn knife was gone, left on thirteen. The Beretta was empty. The sword had skidded several feet away.

Renner smiled. “Now we’re talking.”

He came forward.

Reza stood empty-handed.

Renner threw a right.

Reza slipped it.

Elbow.

Renner absorbed the blow and returned a hook.

Reza blocked.

Renner grabbed the mask.

For the first time that night, somebody touched it.

Krane saw it from across the roof and shouted, “Take it off! Take the fucking thing off!”

Renner pulled.

Reza’s forehead smashed into his nose.

Renner staggered backward.

Reza hit him again.

Elbow to the jaw.

Palm to the throat.

Knee to the ribs.

Renner swung wildly and Reza stepped inside, caught the arm, turned at the hip and threw him over one shoulder.

Renner hit the roof hard.

Reza hauled him back up by his jacket.

Blood poured over Renner’s mouth as he laughed. “You’re not that big.”

Reza drove him face-first into the giant pink P of PARADISE.

The fluorescent tube burst.

Electric pink glass rained across the rooftop.

Renner screamed.

Reza struck him against it again.

Another tube exploded.

Renner dropped to his knees.

Reza walked across the roof, recovered the sword and returned.

Renner looked up.

For the first time all evening, Jack Renner looked afraid.

Reza raised the blade.

Renner whispered, “Wait.”

One strike ended the conversation.

Krane ran.

He didn’t look back. The briefcase hammered against his leg as the sound of helicopter rotors rolled in from the Atlantic.

A Bell 206 appeared over the black water, small at first and then growing rapidly. Its searchlight came alive and swept across the roof.

Krane laughed. “Yes!”

He ran toward the edge, waving both arms. “Here!”

The pilot saw him.

The beam locked onto the white shirt.

Krane turned.

Reza stood thirty feet away.

Black coat moving in the rotor wash.

Sword hanging loosely at one side.

Crimson lenses burning beneath the helicopter light.

Krane backed away. “No.”

Reza walked.

Krane drew the Smith & Wesson and fired.

Reza moved sideways.

Krane fired again. “Stay back!”

Another shot.

“You hear me?”

Another.

Reza continued.

Krane’s heel struck the maintenance ladder behind the Paradise Palms sign.

He looked toward the helicopter.

Too far.

Looked at Reza.

Closer.

He climbed.

The ladder shook beneath him as he dragged the briefcase upward. He reached the narrow maintenance gantry behind the sign and crawled onto it, pink fluorescent light flooding his face.

Reza climbed after him.

Below them, Spring Break raged.

Hundreds of people were now looking upward. The helicopter had drawn their attention first. Now they were pointing at two figures moving behind the enormous letters.

Krane reached the center of the sign.

There was nowhere else to go.

He turned and raised the revolver with a shaking hand. “You know what’s in this?”

Reza stepped onto the gantry.

Krane lifted the briefcase. “Millions.”

Nothing.

“Names.”

Nothing.

“Morelli’s entire fucking operation.”

Reza continued.

Krane screamed, “I can make you rich!”

Nothing.

The helicopter searchlight washed over both of them.

Thousands of people below watched two silhouettes suspended inside a giant pink sign.

Krane’s face twisted. “What are you?”

Reza kept walking.

Krane fired.

The bullet struck a fluorescent tube.

Pink glass exploded.

He fired again.

Missed.

Again.

Click.

Krane stared at the revolver.

Pulled the trigger.

Click.

Again.

Click.

He laughed.

It came out half laugh, half sob.

Reza drew the sword.

The blade caught the pink light.

Krane’s expression collapsed. “No.”

Reza stepped closer.

Krane backed into the enormous letter A.

The helicopter hovered offshore, rotor wash hammering the structure. Below, the crowd had gone quiet enough that Krane could suddenly hear the wind.

He looked down.

Fourteen floors.

His black Cadillac Fleetwood waited directly beneath the hotel entrance.

Krane looked back toward the crimson lenses. “No.”

Reza struck.

One perfect horizontal sweep.

Krane flew backward through the fluorescent A.

The letter exploded around him.

Pink tubes detonated in every direction. Electricity snapped blue-white across the broken framework as Krane caught the central brace and hung there, one arm hooked across the metal, the briefcase still chained to his opposite wrist.

For one impossible second he remained suspended fourteen floors over Daytona.

His shoes kicked empty air.

He looked up.

Reza stood inside the broken A.

Krane reached toward the masked figure. “Help me.”

Reza looked at his hand.

Then at Krane.

The sword came down.

The support bracket split.

Krane fell.

He crashed through the lower section of the sign and carried a storm of pink glass with him. He struck the striped hotel awning, tore straight through, then hit the roof of the black Fleetwood with an impact that sounded like a wrecking ball dropped from heaven.

The armored roof folded inward.

Windows blew out.

The suspension collapsed.

The horn locked on.

For two seconds nobody on Atlantic Avenue moved.

Then Daytona Beach lost its mind.

People screamed and scattered. Others cheered because they still believed they had witnessed some elaborate stunt. Police whistles shrieked. Somebody shouted that a man had fallen from the hotel. Another insisted somebody had thrown him. A third swore they had seen a sword.

High above the street, the helicopter spotlight swung back across the Paradise Palms sign.

It found the broken A.

Found sparks.

Found blood.

Found nothing else.

Reza was gone.

Daytona Beach Police reached the Cadillac first. The chauffeur crawled through the driver’s door with blood running from his nose, staggered onto the pavement and looked at Leonard Krane embedded in what remained of the roof.

Then he vomited.

Officer Dennis Harper pushed through the crowd and shouted, “What happened?”

Everybody answered at once.

“He jumped!”

“No, somebody threw him!”

“There was a sword!”

“Bullshit.”

“I saw it!”

“Guy in black!”

“Where?”

“Up there!”

Harper looked toward the roof.

Pink letters buzzed against the sky.

PAR DISE PALMS.

The A was gone.

He looked back at the body and noticed the black briefcase still chained to Krane’s wrist.

Except the case was open.

Empty.

Harper crouched. “What the hell?”

A young man wearing nothing except swimming trunks pushed through the crowd. “I saw him.”

Harper looked up. “Saw who?”

“The guy.”

“What guy?”

The kid pointed toward the roof. “Black mask.”

Harper frowned. “Mask?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know. Completely black.”

The kid swallowed.

Harper waited.

“He had red eyes.”

Harper stared at him. “You been drinking?”

“Yeah.”

“Taking anything?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

The kid hesitated.

Harper sighed. “What else?”

The kid looked toward Krane, then back at the roof. “He had a sword.”

Harper closed his notebook. “Go find your friends.”

The kid disappeared into the crowd.

Harper remained by the Cadillac while sirens converged from every direction. Guests poured onto balconies. Police entered the lobby. Somebody farther down Atlantic Avenue turned a stereo back up.

Van Halen.

“Jump.”

Harper looked at the shattered sign one last time.

Pink electricity crawled through the broken letter.

For the briefest moment he thought he saw somebody standing behind it.

Black.

Motionless.

Watching.

He blinked.

Nothing.

Three blocks away, Reza walked through a service alley without hurry, without limp and without anyone following. The black Halliburton briefcase hung from one hand. Behind the mask, nothing showed. Behind Reza, Daytona screamed. Ahead, Atlantic Avenue burned beneath motel signs, headlights and fluorescent promises.

A convertible passed the mouth of the alley with four girls inside and the radio blasting. They were laughing too hard to look sideways.

Reza crossed behind them.

A police cruiser screamed past.

Then another.

Reza entered the crowd and disappeared.

By sunrise, seventeen different versions of the story were circulating around Daytona Beach. Depending on who told it, twenty-one men were dead, thirty men were dead, the killer had arrived by helicopter, the killer had escaped by helicopter, the killer had jumped into the Atlantic, there had been three killers, five killers, a motorcycle gang, a federal hit squad or a six-foot woman in a ninja suit.

The official facts were stranger than most of the rumors.

A hotel wrecked from lobby to rooftop. More than twenty armed men dead or critically injured. A destroyed elevator. Explosive damage across the thirteenth floor. A shattered rooftop sign. Leonard Krane embedded in the roof of an armored Cadillac.

No suspect.

No usable fingerprints.

No complete murder weapon.

Only descriptions.

Black clothes.

Black mask.

Red eyes.

Sword.

Most detectives dismissed those parts first. Spring Break witnesses. Alcohol. Drugs. Shock. Stories grew when people repeated them.

By lunchtime somebody claimed the killer had jumped from the roof and landed on the beach without injury. By dinner another witness insisted the figure had walked through gunfire without slowing. By the end of the weekend, students were posing beneath the damaged Paradise Palms sign for photographs.

Somebody spray-painted DAYTONA DROP ’84 across the alley wall opposite the hotel.

The city painted over it Monday morning.

By Wednesday it was back.

Three weeks later, inside a smoke-filled bar outside Tampa, one of Morelli’s men told another what had really happened. He didn’t know Reza’s name. Almost nobody did. But he knew the name whispered inside Morelli’s organization.

His friend laughed when he heard the story about the mask, the hotel and the sword. The first man did not laugh with him.

The smile slowly disappeared.

“What do they call it?” his friend asked.

The man leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “Backmask.”

Far to the south, beyond Miami and beyond the tourist lights, Vincent Morelli opened the recovered Halliburton case.

Every document was inside.

Every photograph.

Every ledger.

Every name.

Nothing missing.

On top sat Leonard Krane’s Paradise Palms room key.

1401.

Morelli picked it up, turned it between his fingers and looked across the room.

Reza Al-Haroun stood in shadow.

Black.

Silent.

Crimson glass where eyes should have been.

Morelli studied the room key and then the figure. A faint smile touched his mouth. “Spring Break?”

Reza did not move.

Morelli gave a quiet chuckle and dropped the key onto the table. “Americans.”

Reza turned and walked toward the door.

Morelli watched until the darkness swallowed the figure completely. Only then did he look back toward the briefcase, toward the names and routes and seventeen years of empire Leonard Krane had almost sold.

For perhaps the first time in years, Vincent Morelli felt completely certain of something. Money bought gunmen. Money bought politicians. Money bought loyalty. But every once in a while, if you were rich enough, connected enough and ruthless enough, money bought a nightmare.

In the spring of 1984, the nightmare wore black.