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As he spoke the dart from Tommaso’s rifle flew, a silver streak under the floodlights, and quivered in the center of Starling’s back. She spun, instantly dizzy, vision going dark, trying to spot a target, saw the barrel at the edge of the loft and fired, fired, fired, fired. Tommaso rolling back from the edge, splinters stinging him, blue gun smoke rolling up into the lights. She fired once more as her vision failed, reached behind her hip for a magazine even as her knees gave way.

The noise seemed to further animate the pigs and seeing the men in their inviting position on the ground, they squealed and grunted, pressing against the barrier.

Starling pitched forward on her face, the empty pistol bouncing away the breech locked open. Carlo and Piero raised their heads to look and they were scrambling, crawling awkwardly together as a bat crawls, toward Mogli’s body and his pistol and handcuff keys. Sound of Tommaso pumping the tranquilizer rifle in the loft. He had a dart left. He rose now and came to the edge, looking over the barrel, seeking Dr. Lecter on the other side of the forklift.

Here came Tommaso walking along the edge of the loft, there would be no place to hide.

Dr. Lecter lifted Starling in his arms and backed fast toward the Dutch gate, trying to keep the forklift between him and Tommaso, advancing carefully, watching his footing at the edge of the loft. Tommaso fired and the dart, aimed at Lecter’s chest, hit bone in Starling’s shin. Dr. Lecter pulled the bolts on the Dutch gate.

Piero snatched Mogli’s key chain, frantic, Carlo scrambling for the gun, and in came the pigs in a rush to the meal that was struggling to get up. Carlo managed to fire the .357 once, and a pig collapsed, the others climbing over the dead pig and onto Carlo and Piero, and the body of Mogli. More rushed on through the barn and into the night.

Dr. Lecter, holding Starling, was behind the gate when the pigs rushed through.

Tommaso from the loft could see his brother’s face down in the pack and then it was only a bloody dish. He dropped the rifle in the hay. Dr. Lecter, erect as a dancer and carrying Starling in his arms, came out from behind the gate, walked barefoot out of the barn, through the pigs. Dr. Lecter walked through the sea of tossing backs and blood spray in the barn. A couple of the great swine, one of them the pregnant sow, squared their feet to him, lowered their heads to charge.

When he faced them and they smelled no fear, they trotted back to the easy pickings on the ground.

Dr. Lecter saw no reinforcements coming from the house. Once under the trees of the fire road, he stopped to pull the darts out of Starling and suck the wounds. The needle in her shin had bent on the bone.

Pigs crashed through the brush nearby.

He pulled off Starling’s boots and put them on his own bare feet. They were a little tight. He left the .45 on her ankle so that, carrying her, he could reach it.

Ten minutes later, the guard at the main gatehouse looked up from his newspaper toward a distant sound, a ripping noise like a piston-engined fighter on a strafing run. It was a 5.0-liter Mustang turning 5800 rpm across the interstate overpass.

CHAPTER

87

MASON WHINING and crying to get back in his room, crying as he had when some of the smaller boys and girls fought him at camp and managed to get in a few licks before he could crush them under his weight.

Margot and Cordell took him up in the elevator on his wing and secured him in his bed, hooked up to his per

manent sources of power.

Mason was as angry as Margot had ever seen him, the blood vessels pulsing over the exposed bones of his face.

“I better give him something,” Cordell said when they were out in the playroom.

“Not yet. He’s got to think for a little while. Give me the keys to your Honda.”

“Why?”

“Somebody’s got to go down there and see if anybody’s alive. Do you want to go?”

“No, but—”

“I can drive your car into the tack room, the van won’t go through the door, now give me the fucking keys.”

Downstairs now, out in the drive. Tommaso coming across the field from the woods, trotting, looking behind him. Think, Margot. She looked at her watch. 8:20. At midnight, Cordell’s relief would come. There was time to bring men from Washington in the helicopter to clean up. She drove to Tommaso across the grass.

“I try to catch up them, a pig knock me. He”—Tommaso pantomimed Dr. Lecter carrying Starling—“the woman. They go in the loud car. She have due”— he held up two fingers —“freccette.” He pointed to his back and leg. Freccette. Dardi. Stick ’em. Bam. “Due freccette” He pantomimed shooting.

“Darts,” Margot said.

“Darts, maybe too much narcotico. She’s maybe dead.”

“Get in,” Margot said. “We’ve got to go see.”