PROLOGUE
The two people stood at the edge of the water looking across the bay from Port Clyde, Maine, toward the Atlantic Ocean and Africa. The cloudless sky was moonless, the wind calm, the night quiet. It was near midnight and stars sparkled like tiny diamonds. A fish rolled violently fifty feet from shore, its prey now sustenance for life.
The man felt the barrel of the gun against the back of his head a fraction of a second before his world ceased to exist. His limp body fell into the cold, salty water at the end of the pier. The shooter turned and calmly walked back up the hill to the parking lot where the other man waited in the front seat of the rental car.
"Well, did you two come to a decision, or are we going to spend the whole night in this godforsaken place?" It was his last words. The .9 millimeter slug exploded through his skull and scrambled his brain.
The shooter exited the rental car, leaving the limp, lifeless body as it lay, slumped across the front seat, and entered a dark-colored van parked nearby. The van, loaded with a half-million dollars worth of oil paintings, and the lone driver, pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward the Rockland, Maine, airport, where a chartered jet waited. Quickly loading the forty-eight bulky canvases aboard the airplane, the shooter, breathing rapidly, sat down in a passenger seat and stared intently at the paintings. They had just been stolen from one of the most powerful Mafia figures in the Unites Sates.
A few minutes later the sleek, German-made airplane climbed swiftly into the clear night sky like some evil, dark angel. The lone passenger unscrewed the silencer from the barrel of the small automatic pistol, examined it with a satisfied grin, put both pieces into the black leather case, zipped it up, and settled back into the plush seat of the jet. It would be a long flight back to Houston.