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expensive German-made rifle to his cheek, he got a small dark box on the runway into the clear greenish light of his nightscope.
    He fired three times.
    The unsophisticated bomb on the runway went off, drowning out the rifle explosions, and blew away a large section of the airplane’s belly.
    As the 727 rolled to a stop, flames burst from its midsection, then out the windows over its wings.
    Doors flew open, and emergency escape equipment tumbled outside. Screaming passengers started to come out of the airplane, some of them on fire.
    The airport’s two emergency trucks headed out toward the burning plane, slowly at first, their inexperienced drivers not believing what they were seeing.
    A person’s burning head was in one of the plane’s tiny windows.
    A white woman on fire ran across the dark tarmac, looking like a burning cross.
    A stewardess stood at one door with her fingers buried in her frosted blond hair, screaming for help.
    Four hours later—when the fire was finally out— six people from the 727 were dead, more than fifty others had been burned, and nobody on the island had a clue why it happened.
    The next day the puzzle seemed to become a bit clearer.
     
    April 25, 1979, Wednesday Couple Slain On Beach

C HAPTER F OUR
    In 1967, when we were selling fifty- and hundred-milligram bags of heroin, Damian told me that he aspired to be the greatest criminal mind in the world. He said that the world was ripe for a criminal hero: brilliant, with a little raffish touch of William Henry Bonney—a little Butch Cassidy gilding…. I liked that idea very much. I got to be Katharine Ross in the fantasy.
    The Rose Diary
    April 25, 1979; Turtle Bay, San Dominica
    Wednesday Afternoon. The Second Day of the Season
    On the macadam highway that sliced through Turtle Bay, Peter Macdonald—a young man who was to play a large part in things to come—made his daily bicycle ride through the lush, sun-streaked paradise.
    As he pedaled a ten-speed Peugeot, Macdonald was enjoying the extra luxury of recalling several foolish glories out of his past.
    Nearly twenty-nine years old, Peter rode well enough. He looked healthy. Physically he was an attention getter. A pleasantly muscular six feet one, he rode in holey gray gym shorts with
Property of USMA West Point
printed in gold on one leg.
    He wore ragged Converse All-Star sneakers from Herman Spiegel's Sportin' Supplies in Grand Rapids, Michigan … gray-and-red Snowbird socks that made his feet peel their yellowing calluses … a bent, dusty
Detroit Tigers
souvenir hat that looked as if it had been worn every day of his life. And nearly had been.
    Underneath the baseball hat, his chestnut-colored hair was cut short, very high up on the sides. It was a real throwback haircut—a cut they used to call a “West Pointer.”
    Nearly everything about Peter Macdonald was throwback: his young lumberjack's good looks; his high Episcopal morals, philosophies; midwestern farmer stubbornness. Everything except for the last four months, anyway—the times he'd spent on San Dominica—the four months he'd been a lackey bartender, a beachcomber, a fornicator. Quite frankly, a nothing.
    As he passed through the island hills, gnats began to swim in the sweat on his strong back.
    Peter the Ridiculous, his girlfriend, Jane Cooke, liked to say in private places.
    Once upon a time Peter had run around Michigan like that: quietly, desperately, ridiculously … in winter … in ten-pound black rubber sea boots.
    Once upon a time he'd been an army brat—the last of the six Macdonald brothers, the last of the Super Six; then he'd been a West Point cadet; then a Special Forces sergeant in Vietnam and Cambodia.
    Old foolish glories.
    When the high weeds and banana plants started to get too thick—buggy, disturbingly itchy—Peter rode closer to the sea, on the wrong side of the two-lane Shore Highway. He was getting tired now. Rhythm going all to hell. Breaking down. Paradise Lost.
    He looked down on the