Black Trump

The crypt was virtually empty. There was a stone altar that looked ancient even to Ray's unpracticed eye. A couple of long, thin candles burned atop the altar, illuminating the mosaic before it. Owl gestured as they passed.

"That's pretty old," he explained. "It's supposed to mark the spot where Jesus met Mary as he carried his cross to Calvary. It's one of the Stations of the Cross. I forget which one."

"No kidding?" Ray said.

Owl nodded. "This is what we want."

He went behind the altar. There was a grated metal door set in the floor, heavily padlocked. Owl produced a key. It scraped in the lock, turning with a rasp of metal on metal.

"Give me a hand. The door's damn heavy."

Ray hunkered down next to him, grabbed the bar and heaved. It came up with a loud screech. Owl looked at him appraisingly.

"Say, you're pretty strong, too."

"I work out a lot and watch what I eat."

Owl nodded. "You first. I have to lock up. Here, take this."

He handed Ray a small flashlight. He shined it down another staircase descending into darkness. Water dripped from the walls, echoing eeirily.

"It's damp."

"Yeah. Snail says we're below the water table here." Owl pulled the grille shut after them and locked it again. "Come on. Be careful."

Old Jerusalem, Ray soon discovered, was a city underground almost as much as it was aboveground. It was lousy with caves, grottoes, and catacombs connected by passages and galleys and crawlways, only some of which were natural and most of which had been in use, off and on, longer than many of the structures above the ground. The Twisted Fists had apparently appropriated their share of underground Jerusalem, Ray got hopelessly confused after just a few twists and turns.

"Hope you know where you're going," he told Owl.

The kid flashed him a smile. "No problem." He checked his wristwatch. "We're right on time."

"For what?"

Owl stopped, gestured ahead of him.

"For that."

There were a dozen jokers, tough-looking, battle-hardened veterans, armed to the teeth and looking more than ready to kick ass. Snailfoot was among them. He smiled.

"We're paying a little visit on the Card Sharks, chum. Welcome to the party."

Ray smiled a smile that took even his new friends aback. "Great," he said. "That's just what I wanted to hear."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"Look at it, damn you," Mark shouted. For emphasis he slammed his hand on the tabletop beside the petri dish. "Even you should be able to see what's going on."

Lip curled, Casaday inclined his big round head ever so slightly over the dish. "So it's a dark splotch. What the fuck, over?"

"This was the control," Mark said.

"So?"

"So it died, Casaday. The new Trump strain killed it, just like the others."

"This late news flash may come as a complete surprise to you, Meadows," Casaday said, "but that's the fucking point of this whole Chinese fire drill."

"But this was the nat tissue culture, Casaday. The new Trump doesn't kill just aces and jokers. It kills everybody."

Casaday looked at him hard. Then he laughed. "Nice try, Meadows. But bullshit. Won't work."

Mark grabbed his arm. "Don't you see, man? This thing'll wipe out half the planet!"

Layton moved forward, peeled Mark's hand away from Casaday and twisted it up behind his back in a painful lock. "Hands off the merchandise, Doc." Casaday said. He nodded to the kickboxer. Layton pushed Mark away and sneered at him.

In desperation Mark turned to Jarnavon. "Tell him what it means, Doctor. Tell him."

The younger scientist walked over to dance down at the petri dish. Then he took off his glasses and polished them on his tie. "Clearly the culture was contaminated somehow," he said, looking everywhere but at Mark. "It happens all the time." He put the glasses back on. "It hasn't got any real significance. Mr. Casaday," he said. "No significance at all."

"Are you crazy?" Mark yelled. He hurled himself at the younger man. A pair of Occidentals, mail-order mercs or CIA cowboys who shared security duties with the local talent, caught him by the arms and held him back. "Have you been doing mission research so long you've forgotten what real science is? You're condemning a billion people to death, Jarnavon! Not just a few thousand jokers and aces. This thing'll kill anything human!"

"It doesn't do to disappoint the patrons, Doctor," Jarnavon said, slipping his glasses back on. "Maybe you should have stayed in research long enough to learn that."

"Enough of this happy horseshit," Casaday said. "Get your ass back in the lab and start loading the canisters, Meadows. We go as fucking planned."

He stalked toward the door, Jarnavon trotting like a lap-dog behind "Wait!" Mark screamed. "Please, you have to believe me. Don't do it!"

At the door, Casaday turned to show him a goblin smile. "You lose, Meadows," he said. "This ain't rock and roll. This is genocide."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

The Twisted Fist raiding party slipped through the underground passages like worms in the earth. Ray felt his excitement grow, pushing aside the unwelcome introspection that had haunted him of late. Snailfoot was in the lead, Ray was bunched in the middle with Owl next to him. The kid looked grimly determined. He glanced up once when he felt Ray's eyes on him, and looked away immediately. Ray wiped the smile from his face. No sense in bothering the kid any more than necessary.

They traveled through the connecting subterranean system for a quarter of an hour or so, which was enough to take them virtually anywhere below the Old City. They stopped in a grotto that, judging by the smoke stains on the ceilings and the skeletons bunched in wall niches, had seen a lot of use during the last couple of centuries.

Snailfoot gestured with his electric lantern, and one of the jokers scurried forward. He was a small, wizened creature, vaguely rodent-like in his lack of chin and length of teeth. His skin was pale, his hair thin, his eyes small and blinking. He looked like he spent a lot of time underground - and preferred the darkness to the sunlight.

"Take the point, Tarek," Snailfoot said. He turned to the others. "Move quietly, gents. We're above enemy territory."

Skulking wasn't Ray's specialty, but he could move quietly if he had too. Some of the Fists, however, weren't exactly skilled in the skulking department. Ray winced at every misstep and stumble. He hoped that none of the Sharks kept an ear on the floor.

Tarek, at least, was a pro. He had tiny, quick feet that carried him silently down the corridors, and a sharp, sniffing nose that led him right to a cul-de-sac where he stopped and pointed at a dressed sandstone wall, hopping from foot to foot with suppressed eagerness.

Snailfoot motioned him back to the group. They gathered in a tight knot. "The Sharks," Snailfoot said in a low voice, "are on the other side of that wall. Our only problem is breaking it down quickly enough so that surprise stays on our side."

"Explosives?" Ray asked.

Snailfoot looked at him, as if surprised that he'd spoken. He shook his head. "No. We can't risk it. This part of the catacombs is especially delicate. An explosion, no matter how carefully shaped might bring down the whole section."

Ray snorted. Amateurs. He'd worked with explosive experts who could blow a particular cabinet in a china shop and not even chip any of the other tea cups. Of course, he couldn't tell them that.

He left the group, went quietly to the wall.

"Mumbles!" Snailfoot hissed. "What're you doing?"

Ray ignored him. He flattened against the wall, arms outspread, feet braced, and pushed. He grinned into the stone. He was no fucking Golden Weenie, but he wasn't exactly a weakling, either.

"Mumbles!" Snailfoot hissed somewhat desperately.

Ray started to push. He could feel the wall shift under his misshapen hands. He turned back to look at the others who were staring at him with varying degrees of astonishment and disbelief.

"Grab your guns, boys," he said. He was grinning like a maniac, but he couldn't help it. "The wall's going dawn."

"Mumbles!"

Ray heaved with all his strength. He felt ligaments strain and tendons pull. Something groaned - either him or the stone wall. Rock shifted scraping loudly across other rocks and then there came again the groaning sound and this time Ray knew it was the wall. He heaved again, spots of color dancing against the blackness of his closed eyes, and then it fell.

Stone blocks crashed down from above. One smashed his shoulder and bounced off, one hit him directly on his back as he leaned forward, off balance from the wall's sudden collapse. He breathed a lung-full of dust from the clouds swirling around him and he knew how Samson must have felt when he threw down the temple.

He laughed aloud.

Someone behind him said in a small voice, "Oh my gosh."

Several someones in front of him looked up from their meal, speechless. They were Sharks, all right. Ray could recognize their paramilitary outfits anywhere.

"Aaaaaaaahhhhh!" Ray said.

And charged into the room.

He didn't know how many Sharks there were. He didn't care.

He didn't know if the Fists followed him. He didn't care.

His eyes darted around the room, registering targets without realizing it, looking for one particular face. General MacArthur Johnson.

The room was a combined dining/bivouac area, sensible in the limited space within the Old City. The room's center was taken up by two long plank tables at which half a dozen Sharks were sitting, eating. Another half dozen were sitting or lying on their cots, cleaning weapons, reading magazines, or catching z's.

Ray roared into the room screaming like a demented soul, shirt torn, bleeding from where he'd been struck by the falling blocks, grey dust ghosting his hair like a spectre, mutilated face grinning like a half-skull.

He reached the first Shark, who was seated at the dining table with nothing more lethal than a chicken leg in his hand. Ray threw him an elbow, catching him in the mouth, crashing lips and smashing teeth, knocking him off the bench. Ray pivoted, took two running steps and scooped the second Shark off the cot where he sat cleaning his rifle. He slammed the Shark against the wall and pushed his grinning, scarred face against his.

"Where's Johnson?" Ray gritted through his fused lips, his eyes shining madly.

"Wha' - wha' you say, man?"

"Johnson!" Ray spat. He could feel the blood rush to his face. He could feel the veins pounding madly in his neck and forehead and he knew he was dancing dose to the edge. But he made no effort to pull himself back.

The Shark finally understood. He shook his head wildly. "I don't know."

Ray head-butted him and let his unconscious form flow down the wall and puddle back on the cot.

The Sharks were shaking off their astonished paralysis and were reaching for weapons. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw his Fist comrades peeking through the hole he'd shoved in the wall.

One of these mothers must know where Johnson was. It was only a question of finding the right one, but Ray's smile twisted into a grimace as he realized he wouldn't have time to question them all before they'd get to their weapons. All right. He could deal with that.

The third Shark was standing up from the table as Ray reached him. He clenched one of his damaged hands tighter and smashed it into the Shark's solar plexus. The Shark turned green, puked up his lunch, and collapsed. Ray hurdled him and landed on a Shark who was trying to scrabble away. Ray grabbed a fistful of hair, slammed the Shark's head on the table, and turned before his victim slipped unconscious to the floor.

A Shark was standing by his cot, pistol out and pointing at Ray. He fired twice as Ray closed the distance between them. The first bullet just missed, the second punched through the taut muscle above Ray's collar bone, and then Ray hit the Shark at full speed, picked him up and smashed him against the wall.

As the Shark slid limply down the wall Ray heard a voice shout, "No automatic weapons! You'll hit Mumbles!"

It was Owl's voice. The kid's got a brain, Ray thought, then he bent, picked up one of the cots, and swatted two Sharks who were rushing him. They went down in a tangle of limbs and Ray tossed the cot away and leaped on them.

One had a knife, a shiny, ugly thing that looked sharp enough to slice steel like chedaar cheese. Ray took it from him, like candy from a disoriented baby. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that at last the other Fists had entered the fray. He had time now.

He kneeled on one of the Sharks. The Shark thrashed about like a live insect on a pinning board, but Ray ignored him. He held the other down with one clubbed hand and dangled the knife in front of his face.

"Where's Johnson?" he asked.

The Shark surged against him, but couldn't break away. "I don't know," he spat sullenly, but there was something in his eyes that suggested to Ray that he was lying. A scene from one of Ray's favorite movies flashed into his mind and he inserted the tip of the knife in the man's left nostril.

"Say again?"

"I don't know!"

Ray flicked the knife and cut the Shark's nose open. He moved the tip of the knife to the other nostril.

"Care for a matched set?" he asked above the Shark's screeching.

"He's a got a place near the Seventh Station! By the Judgment Gate!"

Ray looked exasperatedly at the Shark he was kneeling on and brought the knife butt down, hard, on his forehead. He quit struggling.

"You shitting me?" he asked the other Shark.

The Shark shook his head wildly.

"If you are, I'll find you again and take the rest of your nose."

"I'm telling the truth!"

Ray nodded judiciously and clocked him on the side of the head with the knife butt.

He looked up again to find the room a shambles. The Fists were slightly outnumbered, but they had their weapons to hand which gave them an advantage over the surprised and disoriented Sharks. In the heat of battle some of the Fists had forgotten Owl's instructions and the rat-a-tat-a-tat of automatic weapon fire echoed loudly through the room.

That was sure to bring more Sharks on the run. Ray looked around. The Fists had done all right. Most of the Sharks were down. One or two had run away. The others were lying in bloody heaps. Owl, Ray saw, had a look on his face somewhere between revulsion and exultation, leaning more toward revulsion. Snailfoot was helping Tarek up. The rodent-like joker was bleeding profusely from the stomach. It didn't look good.

One of the other jokers started after the fleeing Sharks, but Ray stopped him with a barked command. "Let them go!"

The joker stopped, looked at Ray, then glanced at Snailfoot who was still trying to help Tarek stand.

"Are you in charge, Mumbles?" Snailfoot asked.

Ray shook his head. "Just good sense. We did what we came to do. Hurt them bad."

Snailfoot nodded slowly. "I see your point. Yes." He looked at the others. "All right, let's go."

They gathered together. No one was seriously hurt, except for Tarek. Owl looked proud and scared at the same time.

"Man," he said to Ray, "I never seen anyone move like that."

Ray shrugged it off. "We'll talk about it later. Let's go."

"Right," Snailfoot said. He gestured at the unconscious bodies Ray had left littered over the floor. "Finish them."

"They're unconscious," Ray said.

Snailfoot looked at him. "So?"

Two of the other Fists were supporting Tarek. Ray came face to face with the Fist leader. His chest was awash with blood from the bullet wound that was even now starting to knit. More blood had splashed on his face from the Shark's cut nose. He held the knife lightly in his hand and said mildly to Snailfoot, "I say leave them."

"So they can kill another time, my dear chum - "

"I'm not your fucking chum," Ray said. "They come against us again, we kill them anyway you want. For now, leave them."

"They can follow us through the tunnels - "

"They're strangers. This is your home territory. They'd be nuts to go after us. Besides, post hidden sentries and blast them to hell if you want. But for now, leave them."

Snailfoot looked at Ray coldly, then said in a dead voice, "Very well." He looked at the other Fists. "We leave them. This time."

Someone started to say something, but Owl broke in, "We have to get Tarek to a doctor, fast."

"Right-o," Snailfoot said, his usual jaunty self again. "Let's go. Ali and Nyugen take Tarek." He turned to Ray. "Mumbles, since it was your idea, you and Owl will serve as rear guard. If any Sharks show, I sincerely hope you'll be able to overcome your scruples and kill them."

Ray grinned. "Bet your ass on it, chum. If you have an ass."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Coming into the Nur's encampment, even under a flag of truce, made Gregg's stomach churn with memories. The last time he'd met the Nur - seven years ago, now - Gregg had overreached himself. Prodded by the addictive need inside him, haunted by the personality that rode his soul, the visit had been a disaster only narrowly averted when he'd forced Kahina, the Nur's seeress-sister, into slitting the ace's throat.

Gregg himself had been shot in the chaos, an event that would destroy his political aspirations a year later. The Nur had become a watershed from which his life had careened downhill, losing him along the way his career, his mistress, his wife, his secrets, and - at last - his power.

The Nur's fault, all of it, the voice told him, tasting his thoughts.

Sand whipped around the Land Rover Needles drove. They'd followed the directions of the taciturn, djellaba-clad, and bearded man who was their guide - met as planned in Damascus - driving across the vast Syrian desert, skirting the mountains of Jabal Duriz and onto the arid plateau where only hawthorns and a few stubborn scrub brushes grew. The sky was a furnace overhead; jerry cans of gasoline gurgled in the back of the Rover, a white flag fluttered from the aerial.

As they bounced over the lip of a rocky hill, the wind was suddenly fragrant with camel musk. A crowd of particolored tents huddled around the stone walls of a small village spread out below them. Their guide stood up on the seat and waved to two guards that none of them had noticed, crouching behind boulders on either side of them. There was a long, chattering exchange in Arabic, then they were waved forward. Gregg could feel the apprehension rising like a cold ocean current from Hannah and Needles as they maneuvered downslope to where a crowd was suddenly gathering. "Gregg? I don't like this," Hannah said. "Look, over there by the building on the center square."

Gregg looked where she pointed, squinting. Blurrily, he could see a human form swinging from a gibbet high up on the side, a cloud of flies buzzing around it. The body was a joker's, the legs fused into a flipper-like tail - a cruel joke of the virus: a mermaid in the desert. Seeing the corpse displayed this way brought back memories to Gregg - the Nur had presented him with a similar display the last time they'd met. "Oh, man," Needles moaned. His hands twitched, and claws rattled.

"Don't react," Gregg told them. "That's what he wants. Needles?"

Needles was peering through the gathering darkness at the crowd watching their approach, and Gregg could sense a flash of recognition from the boy as he saw a veiled and robed woman with a bandage wrapped around one wrist. "Who's that?" Gregg asked.

"No one," Needles said quickly. Gregg could tell by the muddy orange of the words that Needles was lying. Gregg wondered at that, but there didn't seem to be any point in pushing it. Not here. Not now.

Their guide had leaped out of the Rover as they pulled into the clearing in the middle of the village, talking and gesticulating furiously with an elderly mullah. Finally, the guide waved at them. "This way," he grunted in his accented English. "The Nur will see you."

As they entered the building, flanked by guards with Uzis, Gregg realized it was a small but ornate mosque, the walls and floor inlaid with tile in intricate patterns of lapis lazuli and gold, lamps throwing long-legged shadows from the pillars. On the dais of the minbar, the pulpit, a giant sat in a wheelchair. With a shock, Gregg recognized the crippled giant: Sayyid, the Nur's general. The scene before him was - eerily - nearly a mirror of the one seven years before. The power squirmed like a maggot inside him. "Oh, no," Gregg whispered, involuntarily.

"Yes, I remember, too," said a voice, and a man in white robes strode out from behind a curtain on the dais.

Seven years had done little to touch the Nur. His raven hair was now shot through with gray and he'd added a paunch to his once-athletic body, but his skin still glowed emerald in the dusk, and the eyes were still coal-black and piercing in the handsome face. One thing only had changed - the Nur al-Allah's throat was crossed by an ugly, twisting scar that was a darkness on the lambent skin, the legacy of a knife wielded by Kahina, his sister, a knife that Gregg's will had guided. There was a faint smile on the Nur al-Allah's face as he approached the edge of the dais and looked down at the trio. Gregg was cold; a coldness deeper than the approaching night chill. His body trembled on me edge of overdrive; he wanted to run. The Nur stared at them: a joker with talons for hands, a blond nat woman uncomfortably dressed in chador, and Gregg: something only barely humanoid.

The Nur al-Allah threw back his head and laughed.

The sound was like a ringing of chimes, like a chorus. The amusement touched each of them. The guards around him chuckled with the Nur; Needles looked around sheepishly, a half smile pulling at his own lips, and Hannah smiled uncertainly, caught in the Nur's magic laugh. It caught Gregg, too, a need to please this charismatic man, to share his laughter. Down below, where the old strings were attached, a voice railed, cursing.

"Marhala," the Nur said: Greetings. "So this is what has become of the great Gregg Hartmann. In sha' Allah, after all, and I see that He has given you a body to match your mind. You are cursed of Allah, infidel; He has finally made it visible."

The Nur's voice: Gregg remembered that glorious instrument, that cello of a voice which rang and reverberated, gleaming with power as vivid as that of the ace's glowing skin. Kahina's knife had shaved some of the power, had carved the purity from the tones and left the instrument scratchy and uneven. Still, Gregg could feel the power behind it - damaged the voice might be, but not powerless. Not at all. Hannah's smile had wavered and disappeared with the words. When she spoke, her voice sounded weak and puny alongside that of the Nur. "Neither Gregg nor Needles is 'cursed of Allah,'" she told the Nur. "They are just victims of a virus, as are you."

The Nur smiled at her and spread his hands wide. He gleamed in the lamplit dimness of the mosque, like a luminescent emerald. His eyes gleamed, depthless. "Do I seem a victim?" he asked, and the voice dripped reasonableness, it begged agreement. "Young woman, I sense your faith, and Allah has protected you for it. The two of us might call our God by different names, but He is the same. You pray to God because you believe that His will can accomplish anything. I agree; Allah is supreme; and knowing that, you must also know that there are no 'victims.' Not the slightest grain of sand stirs without Allah's knowledge and consent, and even the desert wind is Allah's tool. This sickness of yours is no different - it is but another weapon in Allah's hands. Those who are worthy, Allah rewards, those who are not ..." The Nur stopped, and his gesture took in Gregg and Needles. Needles hung his head under the influence of the Nur's admonishment; Gregg lowered himself to all sixes.

"You once dangled people from the spiderweb fingers in your mind, Gregg Hartmann," the Nur continued. "My sister was one of them. Tell me, Gregg Hartmann - is my Kahina still alive?"

The Nur stared at him, as did Sayyid. Kahina: the Nur's prophetess sister, and Sayyid's wife. I let Mackie Messer slice open her living body in front of Chrysalis and Digger Downs, and I gorged myself on her dying agony ... "No," Gregg answered, because he found that he could not lie into the Nur's gaze. "She's not."

The Nur nodded; Sayyid seemed to sink heavier into the seat of the wheelchair. "I knew she was gone," the Nur said. "Allah told me, and I have already mourned her loss and forgiven what she did to me. If only her faith had been stronger ..." The sadness in the prophet's voice throbbed. Gregg could see tears in Hannah's eyes, a reflection of the Nur's pain, and Gregg found himself wanting to confess, to shout out his guilt and cast himself down before the Nur and await his judgement. I'm sorry. It wasn't me, not really. It was Puppetman, and I've rid myself of him. I control the power now. I'm using it for the right things finally ...

But the Nur shook away the memories of Kahina. "And now Gregg Hartmann is only a messenger boy for the dog-faced jackal howling in the Holy City." His voice was a lash, and they all cowered before it. "That is the only reason why your presence is tolerated - because you are not even worth our contempt. Give me the Dog's message, and I'll give you the reply of the Prophet."

Gregg struggled against the voice. Hannah's face was flushed under the black cowl of her clothing, as if the words she wanted to speak were trapped; Needles stared at the glowing Nur with his mouth open, his claws dangling at his side. The strings are still there, the ones you set long ago, the voice whispered.

But he knows! Gregg wailed. He felt it when we touched him, all those years ago. He felt it and he laughed. Remember?

The strings ...

The Nur waited, seemingly patient. Sayyid stirred in his wheelchair, and even without the link, Gregg could sense the eternal pain of the giant, his body crumpled under the anvil of Hiram Worchesters ace. Sayyid's mind was wrapped in the fog of the pain, the brilliant tactical instrument blunted by its internal torment. "Nur al-Allah," Sayyid said, though his eyes were on Gregg. "We waste time with the abominations. Destroy them as they deserve. There is no dealing with fanatics like the Twisted Fists."

The Nur raised his hand. "I know I allowed them to come here against your wishes, my brother," he said, his voice soothing honey. "Let us hear them. Even Mohamet listened to the petitions of his enemies." The Nur turned back to them. "Say what you have come to say."

Gregg glanced at Hannah; she seemed in a trance, lost in the Nur's influence, her defiance exhausted with her first protest. Needles stared at the floor, not even able to lift his head. "We know about Pan Rudo," Gregg said, his voice sounding weaker and thinner than ever against the rich texture of the Nur's words. "We know about the Black Trump."

Sayyid's head turned sharply in surprise, but the Nur only folded his glowing arms over his chest. An ephemeral smile tugged at his lips and vanished. "It is the task of the faithful to aid the work of Allah," the Nur said. "I don't deny that we would cleanse the world of the defiled."

The strings ... The voice nudged Gregg, insistent, and he opened his mind, let the power drift outward until it found the old channels into the Nur. The link pulsed with the Nur's energy, and Gregg hardly dared to touch them, but the power, hungry, urged him forward. Gregg touched, and though the strings burned in his mind, the Nur did not seem to notice. Yes ... the voice sighed Yes ...

Hannah had stirred, shaking her head as if to clear the mists of a waking dream. "You don't understand," she told the Nur, her voice like that of a whining child. "The Black Trump will kill you and Sayyid as well as the jokers. It will kill those who haven't even manifested the virus."

"The Black Trump will only kill jokers," the Nur told them soothingly, and Gregg could now feel the hard emerald certainty in the man's mind. "All others are protected by Allah."

"No. That's not true," Hannah insisted, her voice shrill, and the Nur smiled down on her like an indulgent parent.

"I speak the truth, daughter. You still don't understand. Those Allah has gifted even those whose eyes are blind to Allah's pleasure in them, are protected. I have seen this. I myself have been exposed to this virus to demonstrate this to my people, and I lived while the jokers who were given the same virus died. It is true."

"No," Hannah said again, weaker this time. "Nur al-Allah, Pan Rudo doesn't share your beliefs - none of the Card Sharks do. He hates all wild carders, jokers and aces alike. Rudo could easily fake a demonstration like that. A placebo ..."

"Your faith is weak," the Nur told her. "That is all." Gregg listened, nibbling at the Nur's bright faith. But look ... the voice told him, and Gregg saw it too. Inside the crystalline fortress of the Nur's belief, Hannah's words sparked against a flaw, a crack in an emerald facet. He says the words, and he makes you believe him, but the same thought has occurred to him. He wonders. Far down below, even the Nur wonders. Widen the crack ...

No! Gregg cried. We don't dare ...

Hannah had bowed her head again, acknowledging the Nur's scolding. When she spoke again, it was to the floor. "The Nur may be right," she said. "I pray that he is. But that's not the message we've been told to deliver. There's more. The Black Dog has a nuclear weapon," Hannah told him, and her words seemed empty and silly. "We have been asked to say that unless you destroy the Black Trump, the Twisted Fists will use their weapon to destroy the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem."

The declaration brought Sayyid half out of his chair. "You would dare threaten Kubbat as-Sakrah? You would defile the rock of Mohamet?" Sayyid's hands trembled on the grips of the chair, the cords in his neck standing out with the effort. He fell back with a cry. "Aiiee! Our people said that the Fists had brought something into Jerusalem from the north. Now we know their full deception."

"This is true?" the Nur asked, turning to Gregg, and the colors of his soul deepened shattered by an eruption of brilliant orange and seething black-red.

"Yes," Gregg answered. "It's true. He says he would do it, and I believe him."

"Then I will send back an answer to the Black Dog," the Nur said, nodding grimly. "And I think that to give the Dog the answer he deserves, your heads will be a sufficient reply."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"Nobody's coming," Owl said in a voice that revealed his relief.

"Of course not," Ray said. He'd bandaged his bullet wound and cleaned the Shark's blood from his face as best be could. His shirt was a total loss, but he'd found one to replace it before leaving the Shark bivouac. He looked nearly normal, for a joker, but a dangerous light still danced in his eyes. He was still jazzed. He still wanted Johnson's ass.

They waited by a bend in the tunnel for half an hour to make sure, but the Sharks weren't about to follow the Fists into their subterranean domain. They'd been burned badly enough already.

But the day wasn't over yet.

"Where's the Seventh Station, Owl?" Ray asked.

"Where Via Dolorosa meets Souk Kahn er-Zeit."

"The Shark said it was called the Judgment Gate."

Owl nodded. "According to tradition the gate that was there during the time of Jesus led to the city's execution ground."

Ray smiled again and Owl looked away.

"Sounds appropriate," Ray said. "Let's go."

"Go?" Owl asked. "Go where?"

"To this Seventh Station. I have to meet a guy there."

"Mumbles," Owl said as he followed Ray through the tunnel, "what're you talking about? What guy?"

"He took something. I want it back." Ray stopped and looked at Owl. "Look kid, the less you know the better. Here. You're the one who knows the territory. You lead the way."

Owl looked at him for a moment, then nodded. "Okay."

They took a tunnel that led into a different system of catacombs. At least they looked different to Ray. After a few minutes they came to a set of rusted metal rungs hammered into the tunnel wall, leading up to what looked like a manhole cover in the street above their head.

Owl pointed up. "Souk Kahn er-Zeit is right above. Can't miss where it comes together with the Via Dolorosa."

"Okay, Owl. Thanks. Now beat it."

"Hey," Owl said, "I'm going with you."

Ray, looking up at the rusty metal rungs, shook his head. "Not this time."

Owl pulled back, anger on his face. "What's the matter? You think I'm not good enough?"

Ray looked back at him. "You're plenty good. But this doesn't concern you. This is personal." He left it at that. There was no sense in telling the kid that he didn't want him splattered by violence any more than he had to be. The kid wasn't a killer by choice, like he was. He was a killer by circumstance, and there was no sense in piling up the body count in his psyche if circumstances didn't warrant it.

"Personal?" Owl asked.

Ray nodded.

"Well, okay."

Ray nodded again, turned, and started up the ladder.

"Mumbles?"

Ray turned, looked down at Owl.

"I never seen anyone who could fight like you."

Ray looked at him a moment. "I was born with it, kid. That's all. Some people are, some aren't. I just was."

Owl nodded, and waved as Ray went up the ladder.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

The Nur-al Allah gestured, and the guards around them came forward.

Needles swung at them, his daggered hands flailing wildly and catching in the sleeve of one of them. The man cried out in pain, but Needless hand was trapped in the folds of cloth, and others grabbed his arms and bore him down to the ground. To Gregg's right, Hannah kicked at the first man to approach her, who went down howling and clutching his shin. Two more guards were on her before she could run.

Gregg felt hands clutching at his stubby top arms, and he pulled away. The men hung on heavily, and the pain sent a pulse of brilliant white through him. The world slowed down, and he was in overdrive, the adrenaline buzzing in his ears. Gregg twisted impossibly fast in the guard's grasp, tearing himself loose. Four legs skittered on tile; like a dog on a linoleum floor, he went busily nowhere for aching moments before he found some traction and shot wildly away across the mosque. He found himself scrambling pell-mell directly into a pillar. Gregg tried to turn, couldn't, and slammed into the unyielding stone. Groggily, he could hear someone shouting. Stone chipped from the pillar just above his head, followed instantly by the report of a weapon.

Gregg ducked and went blindly forward. He rammed Sayyid's wheelchair. The giant spun the wheels in slow motion, trying to move away from Gregg, and chrome glittered in Gregg's eyes. A sudden desperate idea took him. Gregg focused on the chrome, on the delightful metal.

He vomited.

Sayyid, wheeling away from the mad joker, suddenly tilted over as one wheel of his chair turned to metallic goo. The giant toppled with a cry, sprawling on the dais. Gregg hopped on top of the stricken, moaning ace, his head above Sayyid's. "Let us go, or I do the same to Sayyid," Gregg shouted to the Nur. "I'll melt your general's head like a fucking snowball."

The bluff worked. Gregg knew that, if he followed through, nothing would happen to Sayyid beyond a nasty, smelly mess on his head, out the Nur's guards stopped, looking to their leader for direction, and the Nur glared at Gregg. "Back away, abomination!"

The command was stentorian and, to his ears, impossibly deep. Gregg stood stock still, quivering against the fury and compulsion in the Nur's voice. Under him, Sayyid whimpered like a child, helpless to move his own weight. "I command you with Allah's voice, Gregg Hartmann," the Nur continued. "You will back away from Sayyid now."

Gregg tried to force his body to remain still. He took a step, but it was slow and alone. He sobbed with the effort. "Back away!" The Nur's voice cracked with the word.

The strings, Greggie ...

Gregg felt it then. With the break in the Nur's voice, a nodule of brown rot showed itself in the gleaming emerald power of the Nur. You see, the Nur is not certain of his own power anymore. His voice has weakened, and he's not sure he can force you.

"I don't want to do this," Gregg told the Nur, and he pulled at the strings of the Nur's mind at the same time. "We have heard the Nur al-Allah's words, and we know how powerful they are, and how the truth shines in them. But the Nur must know that there is also truth in our words. The Black Trump is a thing of man: of Pan Rudo, not of Allah. Like a nuclear weapon, is it something that you can use safely? Are you really certain that it won't destroy you as well as your enemy?" Yes, that crack again, that flaw. Wedge it open, pull at it ... "I don't want to hurt Sayyid, any more than I want the Black Dog to use that damn nuke. The Black Dog doesn't want you to use the Black Trump; I don't want you to kill Hannah or Needles or me."

Gregg could feel the Nur's power fighting him now. The crack Began to close, despite all his efforts. Inside the voice wailed. Hurry! Now! "We have twin standoffs, Nur al-Allah: you and the Black Dog, and us right now. Let us go, and you win this one. We're just messengers, as you said. Less than nothing. We're not worth wasting Sayyid's life on. Give us the word of the Nur al-Allah to take back to the Black Dog, and we will leave, trembling. Don't all the books of the Qu'ran begin with the phrase: 'In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful?' Be merciful now."

The Nur's mind seethed under Gregg's manipulations, and the strings tore at Gregg's mind, burning. But the Nur grimaced, and gestured to his men. "Let them go," he said, then nodded to Gregg. "Back away," he said softly, and his voice pushed at him like a hand, the strings tearing away. Gregg stepped off Sayyid mutely. As Hannah and Needles came over to him, the Nur bent down and touched the cheek of his fallen brother-in-law gently. "I'm sorry I didn't listen to you," he told the ace. "You were right, as you always are." He gestured to his guards, who came forward and helped the groaning Sayyid to a sitting position. Then the Nur frowned at Gregg again.

"You will tell the Black Dog that the Nur al-Allah does not bow before any abomination. You will tell him that those of Allah will come down upon him, a mountain sent to crush an insect, if he dares scratch the smallest stone of Kubbat as-Sakrah. Tell him that the Nur al-Allah is guided only by the Lord, and that I fear nothing, not his threats or his Twisted Fists or his bomb, because Allah protects me. As for the Black Trump, I will ask Allah again for His guidance, but know that if I choose to use it, the Black Dog's threats will mean less than the whining of some cur slinking around my tent. Now go," the Nur roared, and his voice cracked with the words. "Go! I give you back your lives."

No one said anything until they were back in the Rover and away from the Nur's encampment, their Muslim guide driving once more. Hannah finally seemed to shake off the Nur's presence as they careened over the rock-strewn hillside and the village was hidden from sight. "I thought we were dead," she breathed. "I really thought this was it. Gregg, I don't know how you talked him out of it, but thanks." Her gratitude was like a bath of warm light. Gregg reveled in the nourishing glow, and the voice triumphed inside.

You see! I'm back, Greggie. I'm back, and you need me. You NEED me ...

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

The manhole opened in the center of a dead-end street with no traffic and few pedestrians. No one paid much attention as Ray emerged from the labyrinth, replaced the cover, and joined the foot traffic heading up Souk Kahn er-Zeit. He whistled as he walked, as best he could through his nearly non-existent mouth. Things were coming together. The center would hold. Soon he would see April Harvest again. It would work out. It had to.

The Via Dolorosa was just ahead. He scanned the buildings closely and stopped to look at a plaque set in one. The sign was written in five languages in tnree alphabets. In English it said: The Judgment Gate. On this spot once stood the gate through which Jesus of Nazareth carried His cross on His way to Calvary.

He stopped, considered. This had to be the place.

Deciding upon a covert rather than a frontal assault, Ray went to the alley siding the building. There was a stout wooden gate set in the sandstone wall. Near the gate was a buzzer. Ray studied it for a moment, then pushed it, twice.

There was a short silence and then Ray heard approaching footsteps. A bolt was thrown, and the wooden gate creaked open. A man stood there in khakis and polished boots. He had an assault rifle, slung. Ray smiled.

"What is it?" the Shark asked, irritated.

"Delivery," Ray said.

"Delivery of what?" the Shark asked, even more irritated.

"This." Ray smashed him in the face. The Shark jerked back, fell. Ray stepped over him and shut and locked the door. This was definitely the right place.

He stood in a beautifully-kept garden. It was the greenest spot he had ever seen in Jerusalem. The grass was as green as an emerald. Flowers and fruit trees were in full bloom. There was even an ancient water fountain, the stone Cupid atop it softened by rain, greened by algae. And sitting in a lawn chair by the fountain, reading a book, was the end of his quest, the answer to his dreams.

"April!"

She looked up, startled. It took a second but Ray realized that she probably didn't recognize him. "It's me, Ray."

She stood, her puzzled look giving way to astonishment. "Ray?"

He nodded, heading towards her.

"Ray!" she called, warning in her voice.

He jumped instinctively, rolling and diving. The fusillade missed but tore the potted palm next to him to shreds. The knife he'd liberated from the Shark earlier in the day wasn't exactly made for throwing, but Ray stood, threw, and dodged all in one continuous motion.

A second burst of gunfire was suddenly cut off and Ray picked himself off the ground. A Shark was slumped over a waist-high hedge, Ray's knife protruding from his throat.

"Jeez," Ray said aloud. "Almost missed."

He recovered the knife, cleaned it on the dead Shark's shirt, and stuck it back in his waistband. He liberated the Shark's rifle and turned to Harvest, who had come up behind him. He grinned at her.

"Jesus Christ, Ray. What happened?" She looked incredulous and horror-struck, all at once.

Ray put a hand up to his face. "Oh, this. Don't worry. It's not permanent. I'll fix things once we've wrapped up this little affair."

She shook her head in disbelief. "What are you doing here?"

"I came after you," he explained. "I knew Johnson still had you. At least I hoped he did. I hoped you were all right. You are okay?"

She nodded, still somewhat dazed.

"Well let's get the hell out of here. I'll fill you in later."

"Ray!" she said, pointing again, this time at the wall surrounding the garden. Peeking over it was a head. Ray waved.

"It's okay. He's a friend." Ray tossed Harvest the rifle. "Hang onto this while I open the door." Ray unbarred the gate. It swung open. Owl stood in the doorway. Behind him was a pack of Fists. "What the hell are you doing here?" Ray asked, but he was grinning.

"Thought you might need some help."

Ray shook his head. "Not so far - "

Owl, looking past Ray, suddenly opened his eyes wide. "Look out!"

Ray whirled. Harvest had the rifle up and pointing. General MacArthur Johnson had entered the garden. He was looking around, bewildered.

"Got you now, you son of a bitch!" Ray said.

He started toward Johnson with a grin on his face, but before he could reach him Harvest swung the rifle in Johnson's direction and triggered a blast. It stitched across his chest and he danced jerkily with the multiple impacts, then sagged to the ground. He was dead by the time Ray reached him. There was still a bewildered look on his face.

Ray looked at Harvest. "You didn't have to do that," he said.

She nodded grimly. "Oh yes I did."

Ray looked down at Johnson's body. "Well," he said, "I suppose you were entitled."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"We're out of our league with this."

Hannah's voice spoke softly in the darkness. They'd stopped for the night, the Rover pulled over to one side of the dusty track that served for a road. The sky was dusty with bright stars; a few dozen yards in front of their vehicle, their Syrian escort had started a small fire of twigs and brush. The flames crackled and hissed, sending their own brief stars twirling upward into darkness. Needles was outside, sitting to one side of the fire; Hannah and Gregg had stayed in the Rover, huddled in the back seat with a blanket wrapped around them.

"We did what the Dog wanted. We got the Nur's answer."

"Fanatics in front, fanatics in back - you know, if you closed your eyes and just listened to the Nur and the Black Dog, you'd have trouble telling them apart."

Gregg shrugged. Their conversation seemed to take place somewhere far off. Much louder, much more insistent, was the conversation in his head.

You OWE me, Greggie. I got you out from the Nur with your precious, ugly little skin still attached, and you owe me. I'm hungry. Give her to me. Let's take her - we'll BOTH like it.

No, Gregg answered angrily. You don't understand. You never understood. She loves me WITHOUT you. You'll just destroy that, make her affection into something sick and perverted. It won't be real.

The voice only snorted in derision. Listen to yourself. You're pitiful. C'mon, Greggie, you've already used me with her, remember? Back in Ireland; you'd have had her beating you off if that snot-ass of a leprechaun hadn't interrupted.

You don't know that. I knew it was wrong. I wanted to stop; I might have. And I never tried again, did I? I tell you now - she's mine and we're leaving her alone.

Be a fool, then. We both know how she feels about you, don't we? You're no man, not anymore, Greggie, and she's not ever going to love you the way she did before, not without me. But have it your way. I'm still hungry, and you still owe me. Give me the other one, the voice purred. Can't you feel the dark one, the Syrian? You don't mind something happening to him, do you?

Gregg could sense the pulsing emotions as soon as the voice mentioned them. He'd opened the Syrian almost as a reflex, the first day out from Damascus. The man was like a rotten pomegranate. His hatred of the three of them boiled just below the surface tangle of his thoughts. He said very little, but Gregg could tell that he hated jokers with all the intensity of the Nur himself. The only reason their guide hadn't left them stranded in the desert was his sense of duty. The dark shapes of his thoughts swirled around the campfire like smoke.

He'd be so easy, and you don't need him, not anymore. You know how to get back to Damascus from here.

"... don't you think so, Gregg? Gregg?"

Gregg realized that he'd missed what Hannah was saying. He nodded "Yes," he said and didn't know who he was answering. "Of course you're right."

Hannah leaned back in her seat with a sigh. She stared up at the stars, lost in her own thoughts while Gregg rode the power toward the campfire beyond the windshield. This is almost too easy, the voice laugned. Feel it. Feel the way he looks at Needles. He's the only one of you the Syrian's afraid of. Gregg could sense the hue of the man's thoughts. The man was brooding, hunched with knees to chest as he watched the flames. The hatred in him was pus-yellow, and it filled his soul, underlying everything else. This was a man who would have come to the Nur because of the bitterness and gall that was already in him. The Nur's revulsion toward jokers was a twisted perversion of his faith; this man's loathing was more personal and rooted deep in his memories. Only two things held it back: his obedience to the Nur, and a small node of fear for the claws of Needles' hands. There was nothing in him that feared Gregg, and as for Hannah ...

Easy. Tasty.

Gregg released his ace. The power sped from him like a beast suddenly uncaged, leaping with a roar toward the Syrian man's mind. Dampening the man's caution toward Needles was but the work of a moment. More difficult were the bonds of the man's obedience toward the Nur. Carefully, Gregg pushed down the bars of iron-red faith, while at the same time easing that hatred forward, caressing the sour folds, tugging at the links.

Through the windshield, Gregg saw the man suddenly get to his feet. He stared up at the stars, then down at Needles, who glanced at the man in surprise. The Syrian spat on the ground, then said something to Needles that Gregg couldn't hear. He didn't need to - he could taste the venom: sweet and fulfilling, an appetizer for the hunger inside. Gregg felt the hatred swell like lava, felt the swell of responsive anger spark in Needles.

Now ... Needles said something in return. There was another exchange of unheard words, while Gregg felt the Syrian's bile change slowly from pale yellow to burning orange-red, while Gregg used the power to send adrenaline surging through Needles. Alongside him, Hannah suddenly noticed the burgeoning confrontation, sitting up in her seat with a gasp. "Gregg - " she began.

Too late. Razor-edged steel glinted in firelight, sand kicked from under the man's feet. Needles hurtled to his feet at the same time as the man attacked. The youth's hands, fingers spread wide, slashed quicker than the Syrian's knife - a rake across the abdomen, another across the throat. In Gregg's mind, the hatred dissolved in the shock of delicious white agony from the man. Gregg could feel the triumph inside Needles, and he pumped it, jacked it high. Needles grimaced, his hand came back. Even as the Syrian toppled, Needles plunged his hand deep into the man's stomach, curling his fingers so that the blades of his hand ripped and gouged and tore. The man fell backward, a hand scattering glowing coals.

A thin shriek followed sparks into the black sky.

The thing inside Gregg ate the Syrian's death like candy. Even Gregg could feel the orgasmic pleasure of the man's pain, the slow spiral into oblivion. Then it was over. The power inside him sighed and dropped the strings.

"Needlest" Hannah screamed, running from the Land Rover. Her voice echoed in the darkness, rebounding from the stones. "Oh, God ..."

The boy turned to them. The tight grimace on his face dissolved into a frown, a sob.

"He just came at me," Needles said. Blood dripped from the curved talons of his fingers, a slow, thick rain on the arid earth. "I had to defend myself." Needles' eyes begged their understanding, their forgiveness. "I had to," he said again.

"I understand," Gregg told him. "You're right. You had to."

Inside, Puppetman - sated - laughed.

And so did you, Greggie, it told him. So did you.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Mark stood in the lab watching the technicians pump the suspended virus into the fourth and final canister. Three had already been trundled out on dollies to be loaded into a panel van acquired by the Guangdong Party brass the same way they got their Rolls Royces and Mercedes: they bought it off a street gang that swiped it off a Hong Kong street. Hot cars were Guangdong's nunber-one import.

The canisters were almost sinister in their nondescriptness, aside from the fact that they were enameled this weird, unearthly shade of vibro-electric blue with a touch of green that struck the eyeballs and made them ring like a bell. The enamel was well-dinged and flaking, as if they'd enjoyed long and useful lives already. Mark hoped they were sound.

He was wandering a drunkard's-walk path through the lab, taking last-minute note of this and that on a clipboard. The Chinese technicians and the Occidental guard sitting in a corner with an MP5 on his lap paid him no attention. He was a crazy American scientific genius, so nobody bothered trying to figure out what he was up to at any given moment. And if he went nuts and tried to sabotage the tanks at this late date the guard would shoot him, and Casaday would give his beautiful, feebleminded daughter to the German who looked like a smoothed-off and Vaselined toad. His good behavior, in short, was pretty much taken for granted at this point.

No one, therefore, noticed when he wandered near the humming compressor pumping megadeath mist into the electric blue tank. The mechanical pencil he was tapping on the metal clip of his clipboard took a bad rebound and jumped out of his stork-leg fingers and rolled under the cylinder.

Mark was instantly on his knees with his slat-lean butt in the air, making a long arm beneath the rack that held the blue canister. The guard said, "She-it," and stood up.

"No, man, it's cool," Mark said, transferring his weight to the elbow so he could wave the hand that wasn't under the rack reassuringly. "Just retrieving my pen. Give me a sec and I'm out of here."

The guard stood frowning at him. For whatever reason, Mark was still valuable to the Sharks, or he'd be dead. Casaday being Casaday, the guard was doubtless well-primed with knowledge of the obscene and ghastly penalties that would be his if he shot Mark without a damned good reason. Similar horrors awaited him, on the other hand, if he allowed Mark to monkeywrench anything. He did what most people did when caught in dilemma's visegrips: dithered and hoped for the best.

The process seemed to take a while even for a geek science wonk who was by definition all thumbs. The guard was beginning to shift his weight and play with the safety and the techs were complaining in bluejay Cantonese when Mark reeled his arm back to and stood up. He brandished his pencil high.

"See? Everything's cool." The guard nodded and sat down. The technicians went back to monitoring their gauges.

Mark went back to packing and tapping. Pacing and tapping.

The lab door opened. Layton came stomping in, looking pissed off. That was rest-state for him, but Mark's heart tried to jump out his mouth like a frightened squirrel anyway.

He saw Mark, stopped and fired his finger at him like a nine-millimeter round. "You! Bring your ass with me."

Mark just stared at the kickboxer. Layton smiled. "Or do I gotta encourage you?" he asked.

He didn't. Mark stumbled forward like a beef steer with a hot date with a hammer.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"Guangzhou," J. Bob Belew announced.

"Gesundheit," Jay said. He had to shout to be heard over the whap-whap-whap sound of the chopper's huge rotors.

Belew shook his head. "Canton to you, Mr. Ackroyd." He spread the map out on his knees, and Jay and Finn leaned in closer to look. Belew's Cambodian friends were strapped in behind them, giving the fisheye to Belew's Hong Kong Chinese friends while the jungles of Thailand flashed by below and everybody fingered automatic weapons.

"The complex was originally constructed as an underground bomb shelter for Guangdong Communist Party officials in the event of a nuclear war," Belew was saying. "Given the age of most high-level Red Chinese, they wisely included a hospital wing and medical research facility, specializing in geriatric medicine. State of the art, at least as the art is practiced in China."

"Oh, real good," Jay said. "It wasn't enough we had to deal with the Sharks and the CIA, now we've got a few billion Red Chinese to fuck with us too."

Finn was studying Belew's map. "The Sharks have got to be targeting Hong Kong." He pointed. "Look how close it is."

"Agreed," Belew said. "Hong Kong and Saigon have the only two significant joker populations in this part of Asia. The facility in Guangzhou is a bare hundred kilometers from the New Territories, where most of Hong Kong's jokers live. You couldn't ask for a better staging area."

"And Hong Kong is a center of world trade," Finn said. "The airport ... God if the Black Trump gets loose there, it will spread all over the world in a matter of hours ..."

"Is there any way we can convince the authorities to shut down the Hong Kong airport?" Jay asked Belew.

"It would take more convincing than we have time for," J. Bob replied. "Aristophanes said you cannot teach a crab to walk straight, but I'd sooner try that than attempt to convince the Crown Colony to cut off trade for as much as ten minutes."

"So we need to make sure the stuff never gets to Hong Kong," Jay yelled. His stomach did a lurch as the huge helicopter hit a patch of turbulence. It was an Old CH-46 Chinook, shaped like a big green banana with rotors at both ends, designed to belch platoons of paratroopers out on top of bad guys, although Jay figured Lord Tung had used it for other purposes. He kept wondering what kind of repair a war surplus chopper owned by a big monkey was likely to be in, until he decided that even if the rotors all fell off it was no big deal. The Black Trump would probably kill them all anyway.

"Dr. Finn," Belew asked the centaur, "assuming the virus was ready to go, what would be your optimal method of delivery?"

"Aerial," Finn replied, without a moment's hesitation. "Provided you had a large enough supply in droplet form. Spray it from cropdusters, cover the whole city, infect as large a population as possible. The one thing we've got going for us is that the virus is only fatal for the first three or four generations. So the Sharks have no choice but to try and maximize the initial dispersal, to create as many vectors as they can."

"So all we have to do is cut off all air traffic between Canton and Hong Kong," Jay said. "It would help if we had somebody who could fly. Where the hell is Jetboy when you really need him?"

"I've sent some men to cover Guangzhou's airports. Dr. Finn, I'd like you to go with them."

"Why?" Finn said, suspiciously.

Belew was patient. "My men know Mark by sight, and they have descriptions of Casaday, but we'll need you to watch for Ackroyd's two operatives. Besides, a joker would be rather conspicuous where Jay and I are going. We need to get into the complex and destroy the virus before they can move it."

Jay's brain was running in circles, like a hamster on a wheel. "I hope you know the secret password, Belew, 'cause I sure as hell don't. A place like this is going to have security out the wazoo."

Belew gave him a cool, ironic smile. "Didn't that famous detective school of yours teach you how to penetrate top-secret enemy installations, Mr. Ackroyd?"

"You know, they covered it, but I slept late that day. Maybe we could dress up in Domino's uniforms and go in with a pizza. Other than that I'm fresh out of plans."

"You're not far off the mark," J. Bob said, stroking his mustache. "That's more or less precisely what we are going to do."

Jay blinked and Finn looked up in sudden alarm. "Excuse me?" they said in unison.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

It was a medical examination room. Sitting in an old-fashioned wooden chair, nude but for boxer shorts, his arms and legs secured to the chair's arms and legs with wire, was Sascha Starfin. A goon, local or at least ethnic Chinese, stood behind him with folded arms and shuttered face. A technician in a white smock stood by a counter on which sat a rack of tiny stoppered vials, each labeled with a lot number scrawled on a piece of tape. Beside it a hypodermic syringe rested on a scratched but gleaming stainless-steel tray.

The joker turned his eyeless face to Mark. "Don't do it," he said.

Mark stared around like a cat caught in a blind alley by a pair of pit bulls. Casaday was there, smiling his cool Halloween-pumpkin smile. Dr. Carter Jarnavon was on hand too, looking truculent and dubious by turns.

"What the hell is this?" Mark demanded. His voice cracked like a Ming vase dropped on cement steps. He already knew what it had to be.

"Your good friend and mine, Doctor Jarnavon here, reminded me that you're a resourceful son of a bitch, not necessarily the stumbling geek you act like most of the time," the spook said. "It occurred to my nasty, suspicious mind that you might get the notion of playing cute tricks."

Mark swayed. Busted! His head felt like a helium balloon. His knees felt like well-boiled samples of the pasta which Marco Polo had not, as a matter of fact, introduced to Italy from China.

Tumult in his head: Traveler, I told you so! JJ Flash, They can't know anything, if they did they'd already be pruning Sprout like a shrub to punish you ...

Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. He tried to fill his forebrain with noise. Sascha was utterly panicked. He'd babble anything he could to save himself. Oh, God. Sprout, Baby.

"You know my respect for you is all but limitless, Doctor," Jarnavon said. "But, sadly, I'm all too aware that your heart hasn't really been in the work you've been doing for us, great and necessary though it was."

He took off his glasses and polished them on the tail of his smock. "You demonstrated the extended virulence of the new BT strain by using it to kill xenovirus-positive human tissue cultures. But then it struck me: might you have secretly introduced some foreign agent, a toxin or even an unknown pathogen, in order to kill the cultures and mask the fact that the tenth-generation Trump strain wasn't realty virulent?"

"No, man. I didn't do anything like that." You slimy little shit. "Think about what you're saying. You have my little girl."

"Your problem is, Meadows, you think too much," Casaday said. "First off, you think too much about what a terrible thing it is you're helping to do to all the twisted wild card freaks and monsters in the world. And you think you're smarter than the rest of us. You might even think it was worthwhile sacrificing your little honey to save the jokers. Or you might think you could get away clean."

"You've got to believe me," Mark wailed.

"I'll tell you what I believe," Casaday said. "I believe that you're gonna stick that needle in this ugly fucker's arm and drive it home. And if he doesn't bubble up and die pretty fucking pronto, I believe I'm gonna give your golden-haired little girl to Herr Oberstleutnant Ditmar. Are we getting to be on the same page, here, Doctor?"

"Hey!" Layton yelped. "You said I could have her."

"Don't get your underwear in a bunch, dipstick," Casaday said. "He's gonna give in. We got him by the teeny-tiny balls, and he knows it."

Mark held up beseeching hands. "Just don't make me do it, man. I can't."

Jarnavon shook his head, tut-tutting to himself. "I can administer the injection, Mr. Casaday."

A grin was making its slow evil way across Casaday's face. "No," he said. "He does it himself. Or Ditmar starts carving his initials in the girl's ass."

Mark turned as if he were immersed to the waist in half-set concrete, picked up the syringe and a vial from the rack. He kept his mind filled with Jimi Hendrix playing "The Star-Spangled Banner."

"Sascha," he said, poking the needle through the rubber cap and pulling back the plunger, "please forgive me, man. I don't have any choice."

The eyeless joker began to scream.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

It seemed that Needles, not Gregg or Hannah, had been the key player in the visit to the Nur.

"You saw her?" the Black Dog asked. "You're certain."

Needles nodded. They were in the Black Dog's quarters deep in the catacombs. Snailfoot stood like robed and cowled Death near the door; everyone else was sitting on ornately-brocaded pillows, Gregg curled on one like a house cat. And, like a cat, he found that he was sensitive to motion around him. He kept expecting Billy Ray to appear from hiding at any moment. He didn't like the feeling. The paranoia made it difficult to concentrate on what was being said around him.

"It was Zoe," Needles was saying. His emotions leaked out from his head like a sieve, confused and bewildered. "I noticed her as soon as we entered the Nur's encampment. She had the bandage around her arm. She saw me, and nodded."

Puppetman yammered for the boy. Gregg ignored the insistent voice. Okay, Greggie. Play it your way. I'm not hungry now. But I will be. Very soon. Gregg forced the creature down into the mind cage he'd constructed so long ago, the bars battered and bent from years of the power's hammering and scorched from Tachyon's probing so many years ago. Gregg wondered if the bars would hold. They have to. They're all I have.

Puppetman giggled to itself.

In contrast to Needles, the mind-hues of the Black Dog were sharp-edged and bright. "Hartmann and Davis have given us the Nur's answer - which is basically 'fuck you.' Well, I have an answer to that."

"What are you going to do?" Hannah asked. "This isn't about the Nur and the Fists, not any more. Everyone's in danger. Every last wild carder - "

The Black Dog chuckled under his mask. "Your concern is very touching, but out of place, I'm afraid."

"What are you planning to do?"

"Whatever I need to do," the Black Dog replied. He laughed harshly at his own retort and left the room with Snailfoot in tow, cutting off Hannah's protest.

"Damn it!" Hannah said. The catacombs echoed with the sound of her anger. She looked at Gregg, helpless, her fists knotted at her side. Needles' fingers twitched, the talons clashing. "What do we do now?" Hannah asked.

Hungry ...

"I don't know," Gregg answered.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Harvest was uncommunicative and subdued. Ray could understand why. He didn't ask her what Johnson had done to her. He figured it would come out someday, and if not, that was fine, too. Ray watched her as they slept in the same bed, eager to awake her with his kisses, but understanding also why she'd be reluctant to make love to him in his present condition. That, too, would change when he'd get his face fixed.

Early the next morning there was a knock on their door. It was Owl. The Black Dog wanted to see them. Ray himself was eager to meet the almost-legendary joker. Now that he had Harvest back it was time to start thinking about that nuke.

Owl took Ray and Harvest underground again. They twisted and turned as usual, then Owl stopped. He turned and looked at Ray, holding out a couple of blindfolds. "You have to put these on," Owl said.

Ray rolled his eyes. "Oh, please."

"No, really," Owl said. "It's orders."

He could see the pleading in the kid's eyes. He looked at Harvest and shrugged. "Well, if it's orders ..."

He and Harvest stood quietly while Owl blindfolded them. "Put your hands on my shoulder," Owl told the two. "I'll guide you."

They complied. Ray could have counted the steps and the turns, but didn't think it worth it.

They finally stopped and Owl removed their masks. Ray blinked and looked around. They were in a small, squarish room that was furnished largely by carpets and throw-pillows on the floor. A man was sitting on one of the pillows. He wore a mask that was the face of a black dog.

"Come in," he said. "Sit down." He dismissed Owl with an imperious gesture.

Ray sat on one of the pillows, feeling a little silly. "What do you want?" he asked.

The Black Dog regarded them steadily from underneath his mask. "I should ask the same of you two." He turned so that he was looking directly at Harvest. "You're the missing American special agent, April Harvest."

"You have a good intelligence department."

The Dog waved a depreciating hand. "We try. You'd be surprised how deeply some of our sources are placed." He turned his attention to Ray. "You, I don't recognize. But, from the presence of Miss Harvest and the glowing reports I've received of your fighting ability - and the not-so-glowing reports about your attitude - you must be Carnifex."

Ray grinned, half-pleased at the recognition. "So who are you under the mask, Sherlock Holmes?"

The Dog shook his head. "We won't discuss that. You're after the Black Trump, of course."

"No shit, Sherlock," Ray said.

"Pan Rudo is working with the Nur, trying to culture enough of the Trump to spread it around the world," the Dog said. "We know where their laboratory is."

Ray said, "Well, let's go after them!" He jumped to his feet, eager to get going, to destroy the last vestige of the Black Trump as soon as possible. "What are we waiting for? Let's get going."

"We?" the Dog asked. "How did this become 'we' all of a sudden?"

Ray squatted down so that his scarred face was inches from the Dog's. "It became 'we' five weeks ago, when I saw what the Black Trump does, Dog Man. You going to keep me from going after it?"

"Ray's right, Harvest said pulling him backward to thump butt-first on the floor next to her. "There's no sense fighting over this. I suggest we call a truce until the Trump is destroyed, and work together toward that end."

The Black Dog nodded slowly. "I'd like to keep my people away from the Trump, but I could care less about you aces and nats. I'll give you a day. Destroy the Trump and rescue our agent in the Nur's camp, an ace named Zoe Harris. If you fail, we have another way to deal with it."

"What do mean?" Harvest asked.

The Black Dog seemed to smile again. "I'm sure you heard about a certain commodity we've recently acquired."

"You mean the bomb?" Ray asked.

The Dog shrugged. "To come to the point, yes. We'll give you a day to get the Trump, and Zoe Harris, out of the Nur's camp. If you fail, we'll nuke it."

"Well, that's better than blowing up Jerusalem," Ray said, "but do you really know what you're doing? How're you going to deliver it - "

"I suggest," the Doc said, "that you leave the details to us. You worry about the Trump and Ms. Harris."

Harvest looked at him narrowly. "Then we have a truce until the Trump is destroyed?"

The Dog inclined his head. "A truce."

"Great!" Ray said. He jumped up again.

The Dog said. "Don't worry about transportation. I think you'll find our travel accommodations most satisfactory."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

The Chinese medical tech took the thermometer from Sascha's mouth and held it to the light with rubber-gloved fingers. Sascha let his head drop to the side and moaned. His skin was ashen, his face flecked with sweat. Standing slumped against one wall with Layton right beside him like a Siamese twin, Mark stared at him in nauseated fascination.

"Thirty-ni' point fo' degree," the tech announced with a cheery smile.

"Thirty-nine degrees?" Casaday exclaimed. "Fuck me. What does this virus shit do, freeze the motherfucks to death?"

"That's in Celsius, Mr. Casaday," Jarnavon said.

"What is that in white man measure, God damn it?"

"One hundred and three."

Casadav sucked in a deep breath, let it out through distended nostrils. "I thought the puke would go into convulsions, fall over, maybe his head would turn purple and explode. Instead he's getting a temperature and a runny nose."

"This isn't the wild card itself, Mr. Casaday," Jarnavon said. "It's not going to have such a rapid effect. The symptoms the subject is displaying are entirely appropriate."

"'The subject,'" Mark echoed dully. "You got a way with words, Jarnavon. He's not a subject, he's a human being. It's guys like you who make all scientists look like soulless robots."

Casaday laughed harshly. "Listen to the Last Hippie, here. He's about to be the biggest name in genocide since Martin Bormann, and he gets all hot and bothered over the fate of one crummy monster."

Mark covered his face with his hands. "If nothing else," Jarnavon said, as chipper as a Mormon cheerleader, "we have our proof that the Trump is still virulent. Dr. Meadows hasn't played us false."

He rubbed his hands together. Mark stared at him with peeled-onion eyes. He thinks he's giving me a compliment.

Casaday scowled, then bobbed his huge head toward the door. "All right then. Get him the fuck out of my sight."

"I want to be with Sprout," Mark said.

"When I say so," Casaday said. He looked at Layton. "Take him back to the lab and lock him in. Let him stew in his juices surrounded by reminders of the real good turn he's done all his little ace and joker buddies around the world."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"Wait a minute," Ray said. "This fucking camel has eight legs!"

The camel turned calmly and looked at Ray. "You don't look so great yourself, pal."

Owl suppressed a giggle as he saddled the beast. "I want you to meet a friend of mine," he said. "This is Croyd Crenson."

"The Sleeper!" Ray and Harvest said in unison.

"What are you doing here?" Ray added.

"Right now, eating hay. Then I'm going to drink a lot of water, because that desert is going to be a bitch to cross. Then, when we get to the Nur's camp, I'm going to kill Pan Rudo, though right now I'm not too sure how. Maybe I'll stomp him to death. Maybe I'll bite him to death," He grinned, exposing big, ugly camel teeth. "What do you think?"

"I think this is insane," Harvest said.

"Look," Croyd said, "I'm not too happy looking like a walking cigarette commercial myself. I just woke up yesterday, after a blessedly short sleep, looking like this. Worse, smelling like this. And the only thing I can eat is hay!"

Ray pulled at his lip thoughtfully. "Could be worse, I suppose."

"Damn right," Croyd said. "I could have woken up as a giant penguin or something. At least this body will be useful. All right. So much for the hay." He turned to a big tub of water and started to slurp it up. He stopped, looked at Owl. "I don't suppose you have anything fresher. This water is kind of green."

Owl shook his head. "Sorry."

"Oh well." Croyd went back to drinking. He drank a long time and a lot of water. He finally looked up, water drooling from his pendulous lips. "All right. Mount up."

Ray looked at Harvest. "This is never going to work."

"Oh, just shut up and get on my back. Have some faith for a change."

Ray and Harvest exchanged looks. "Well," Harvest said. "All right."

Ray got on first. Harvest followed gingerly, sitting behind Ray and wrapping her arms around his waist. Croyd lurched to his feet. Ray grabbed the saddle pommel and clutched Croyd's side tightly with his knees.

"Don't forget these," Owl said. He handed Ray and Harvest a pair of burnooses complete with scarves to shield their faces. He tied a pack of equipment to the saddle rack. "Good luck."

"Thanks," Ray said.

"Hold on," Croyd said, and started to trot.

They were already on the outskirts of the city, having been driven there by Owl to meet Croyd. Croyd simply headed out into the desert.

"I hope you know where you're going," Ray called out.

"Don't worry," Croyd said. "I have a perfect sense of direction."

He put on some speed. Then more. And more. Soon his feet were a blur on the desert sand and they were going as fast as Ray had ever gone in a car. Faster.

Ray was thankful for the burnoose and scarf. He was even more thankful for the woman clasping him from behind. But as they raced into the desert, fear was pulling at the corners of his consciousness with icy fingers. He was going to have to face the Black Trump again.

And that frightened him more than he cared to admit.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

ONE

A scrape of shoe leather on linoleum. Mark's heart jumped around in his chest like a coked-up frog. He spun away from the computer monitor, which was blossoming with silent screen-saver fireworks. What's happening to Sascha spooked them, they decided to listen to me, they came back -

Quasiman stood behind his swivel chair, gazing down on him in near-darkness with the flicker from the monitor illuminating a gaze of benign intelligence. He held something in a large, misshapen hand.

"Thank God, man!" Mark whispered hoarsely. He unfolded himself from the chair like a drunken sandhill crane from its nest. "We're running out of time. The Black Trump has mutated, it's become lethal to anybody human, not just wild card-positives. And they're going to release it anyway. They think it's a trick."

Quasiman nodded. "I remember." He dropped a packet into Mark's outstretched palm.

Mark glanced at it, feeling as if his head had become a helium-filled balloon. It was a wastebasket liner, jammed with glassine packets of powders, mostly white. Relief was intense as orgasm, intense as when the dentist's drill finds the nerve ...

Catch a grip, here, JJ Flash warned him. In his own persona he thought, I'll have to test these. Can't risk turning into Monster with Sprout around -

"There's something you have to do, man," he said in an urgent whisper. "They have four canisters they're going to release over Hong Kong. One of them - "

"Hey! What the fuck!"

The huge joker put his hand to Mark's breastbone and pushed. It was a gentle gesture, but Mark went sprawling into his chair as if he'd taken a shotgun blast to the chest and slid back across the linoleum to bang into his desk and begin to topple over.

The head-squashing stuttering report of a machine pistol in an enclosed space followed the shout from the lab door. Quasiman phased out as bullets cracked through the space he and Mark had occupied seconds before. Mark yelped and dove the rest of the way to the floor. The computer monitor gave up the ghost with a flicker and imploding pop, and test tubes in ranks shattered into crystal snow. Mark flattened himself and held his hands over his head.

Over the ringing in his ears - he'd always thought "a shot rang out" was a Sly cliche until he'd been fired at a few times in the Nam - he heard O.K. Casaday's outraged shout; "Knock that shit off, you dickless wonder! You don't know what's fucking in here!"

Mark slid the packet of drugs out of sight beneath the desk and risked a peek at the door. Nobody was paying him any attention. Casaday was just knocking up the arm of one of his CIA cowboys. The arm in question had a handgun-sized Micro-Uzi in it, which snarled the rest of its magazine into the dropped ceiling. Casaday dropped the man with an overhand right as shredded acoustic tile fell on his shoulders like snow.

"Fuck!" Casaday shouted, holding his wrist and shaking his fingers. "My Hand!"

The inevitable Layton stood blinking behind him. "Why didn't you let me hit him? It's my job."

"Because I was closer," Casaday snarled. "Besides, you were just standing there with your prick in your hand, you stupid son of a bitch."

Layton frowned. "Don't call me stupid," he said.

Reasonably confident no more large-particulate lead pollution was about to be emitted, Mark was picking himself up like a handful of broken crockery. Casaday gave up wringing his wrist and strode forward.

"Just what in the name of fuck do you think you're doing?" he slapped Mark stingingly across the face before Mark could reply. "You were talking to some kind of freak ace, weren't you?"

Casaday grabbed Mark by the front of his shirt. "You were trying some funny business, weren't you, Meadows?" he said, slapping him back and forth to emphasize his words. "You thought you were gonna be smart. Well, I warned you what would happen if you came smart with me. Didn't I?" Slap. "Didn't I?"

He shoved Mark away. Goons seized his arms and clamped him in place as Casaday turned. "Tell that Kraut fuck to haul his fat ass down here on the double," the renegade commanded. "Bring the little blond snatch too. And get that little weasel in the lab coat in here. Now!"

Minions went flying. Layton reached into a back pocket of his Bugle Boys, took out a pair of fingerless black punching gloves, flexed his fists, and looked expectantly at Casaday. "Can I thunder on him some, boss?"

"Shut the fuck up," Casaday said. He had his butt propped against a lab counter and was whistling a voiceless time.

"What are you going to do?" Mark asked.

"Nothing good," Casaday said.

In short order the cast Casaday had demanded was assembled. Sprout writhed and squealed when she saw her father, but a grinning Layton twisted her arm up behind her back. "People," Casaday said in his grating voice. "We have a problem. This fuck here's been in contact with some kind of teleporting freak." He backhanded Mark savagely across the face. His big knuckles hit Mark's cheekbones like pebbles.

Casaday winced, rubbed his hand again. "How's the eyeless puke doing?"

Dr. Carter Jarnavon blinked through his horn-rims and smiled. "Very well, Mr. Casaday. He's convulsing and vomiting. I don't think he can last much longer."

"Then we're good to go. Let's get the cylinders loaded. We can't take a chance that this shitheel hasn't blown the whistle on us."

"But the plane," Layton said. "It won't be ready until tomorrow - "

"Screw the plane." Casaday checked the Rolex strapped to his hairy, knobbed wrist. "At eight o'clock the airship Harmony leaves the Canton airport to take a load of limp-dick tourists back to HK. It's gonna have some unexpected cargo on board."

Jarnavon stood there with a little smile imprinted on his face. "I mean you, chisel-dick," Casaday snapped. "Move!"

Jarnavon turned to Mark, performed a comic-opera bow. "Doctor," he said. "It's been a tremendous pleasure." He left.

"And now," Casaday said, turning to Mark with a huge smile carving its way across his face, "the time has come wherein you learn the truth of the old saying, 'payback's a motherfucker.' Ditmar!"

The German actually clicked his heels. "Mein Herr!"

Casaday walked up to Sprout. The girl cringed away as he raised a hand to stroke her cheek.

"Take her," he told the German. "She's yours. All yours."

"No!" Mark yelled.

Layton had his lower lip stuck out in a pout. "You said I'd get her if he acted up, boss," he said plaintively. "You said that."

"No, I said that was an option. It wasn't like an exclusive offer or anything. Besides, we got work to do, remember?"

"But you said I could have her."

"Okay. So I lied. Who gives a puppy fuck?" Casaday reached out and grabbed a pinch of Layton's cheek. "Listen up, lunchmeat. There's a billion fucking people in China, and all of 'em work cheaper than you do. And this is where all that Mickey Mouse chop-sockey bullshit of yours got its start anyway, am I right? Yeah. So catch the latest news flash: you can fucking be replaced. Do you read me?"

The kickboxer nodded sullenly, still hanging onto Sprout like a child ordered to relinquish a favorite toy. Mark struggled wildly, but the men holding him might have been statues from that frothing psychopath Emperor Shih Wangdi's funerary army.

"Okay, then" Casaday said, striding toward the door. "Let's get cracking. We got places to see and people to do."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"What has happened to your hand?" Rudo asked.

He hadn't noticed the bandage yesterday. A jeep with a white rag tied to its antenna had come into camp and Zoe's heart had soared when she saw Needles, but she had not dared approach him. There had been some sort of uproar in the Nur's tent, and a joker that looked like a yellow bug had gone in and come out again - alive. There had been shouts, and Zoe tried to make sure Needles and the buggy joker saw her, but the jeep had driven away, leaving only rumors, no rescue.

The rumors said that the Black Dog planned to nuke the camp, but the Nur's followers hadn't moved it. Why hadn't Needles picked her up? Why?

Rudo seemed to have forgotten that he'd asked her a question. He kept his attention on the morning camp and its bustling activity. The Nur's tent was empty, for a helicopter had picked up the Nur and Sayyid at dawn, gone on some mission or another - someone had said that they were headed for Jerusalem, to lead a war against the Black Dog.

Really? A green man and a crippled giant, alone against the Fists? Whatever. The Nur was gone, and his followers seemed convinced that they were safe, that Allah would protect them against a nuclear attack - but guards watched the empty horizon, and the sky.

Zoe let a breeze slip through the loose arms of her black cotton robe and watched women trot to a water truck and fill their jars.

Rudo frowned at the truck. The limitations posed by hauled water would make work in the lab difficult. They had set up camp near a low range of purple cliffs. There was enough moisture here to feed some scrubby vegetation, but there was no well.

"Your hand!" Rudo sounded exasperated.

"Nothing. A little sprain," Zoe said. She cradled her bandaged left wrist in her right hand.

"While we made love. I am sorry. Let me check it for you." Rudo reached for her wrist. Zoe twisted away from him before she could stop herself. She smiled, trying to hide her revulsion.

"Really. It's nothing."

"At least let me see if we can prepare a proper splint for you."

Zoe let him lift her hand. Where would be a good place for it to hurt? She picked an area on the pinky side of her wrist and winced when he probed there, his fingers gentle.

"Ah. Do you feel anything in your fingers when I push here?"

Should she? She shook her head. "No."

"Good. The ulnar nerve is not compromised. See? All these years since anatomy class and yet some things are imprinted! A splint, a splint. Come with me."

She followed him to a tent that hadn't been at the last camp, more brown than black, and smaller than the others. It stood by itself under the scant shade of a cliff, well away from the other tents, out of sight of the main camp.

It was a sort of infirmary. As her eyes adjusted to the sudden shade, Zoe saw cabinets of stainless steel on large wheels, their doors opened on arrays of autoclaved instruments in sealed white packages. There were four cots, their corners made up with military precision, each one -

Occupied by the lumpy bodies of jokers who lay on their backs with their hands behind their heads. Jokers, yes, with oddly shaped bodies, mismatched faces. One poor devil was covered with a pelt of fur that looked like mink and was drenched with sweat and streaks of salt, a deformity that must be near-fatal in this arid country. The furred man moved and Zoe saw a gleam of metal at his wrists.

The jokers were handcuffed to the cots. They were silent. Dead? No, a woman's third eye blinked, a white-furred boy took a deep, quiet breath. Two of the jokers had IVs connected to veins in their arms. The fluid was bright yellow.

Rudo rummaged through the instruments. "Always what I look for is in the last cabinet," Rudo said. "Here!" He found a foam and aluminum splint wrapped in blue plastic. "This will maintain a slight dorsiflexion, a proper anatomic position. And you will be able to work in it. That's good, yes?"

He unwrapped the splint and she let him fit it to her wrist. She stared at the jokers, not even trying to hide the horror she felt. Rudo looked up at her.

"Our patients are not in the best of health," Rudo said. "Paolo is correcting malnutrition, infections, dehydration. Jokers are not treated well in the desert."

"What's ... What's in the IV's that makes them yellow?"

"Vitamins," Rudo said. He put his hand behind her elbow and guided her out into the bright sunlight. When they were out of earshot of the tent, he said, "These four brought us here, you might say. The opportunity presented by their capture seemed to override the inconvenience of having to haul in water for our work. You see, for our tests to be effective, we need to have a healthy, premorbid substrate. You do understand."

"My work," Zoe said. "I must return to my work." The sand near her feet came suddenly into sharp focus, every grain highlighted with utter clarity. It was innocent, pure stone. It had never lived. She envied it.

The sleeve of her robe had slipped down over her splint. She rolled it up.

"Work. Yes," Rudo said.

Zoe ran from him, seeing the desolate cliffs, the empty landscape, aware that thirst and death waited behind every dune. It was time to get out of here, damn it. How?

The Land Rover and the flatbed truck that had been at the last camp had been driven away before dawn. The water truck was the only thing with wheels left in the camp. There were no telephones, no communication setups of any kind. Zoe had looked hard for them. This camp was as isolated as anything in the twentieth century could be.

The camp was far enough from water that it had to be trucked in, and that meant it was a long way from humans, probably a long way from roads. She couldn't walk out and live.

She felt Rudo's eyes on her back. Slowing, she walked into the laboratory tent. She scrubbed her hands, her face. She rinsed her mouth and spat.

Where was the Black Dog's goddamned rescue? Where?

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Sprout lay staring at Ditmar with wide blue eyes as he stripped off jacket, tie, and shirt with surprising alacrity.

Ah, liebchen," he said, unfastening his trousers and sliding them down his saggy butt. "You are so very lovely. Normally I like the loveplay first - " He nodded toward a scuffed black valise by the wall. "But you have got me so excited, liebchen, I don't think I can wait. No, not at all."

"You sick son of a bitch," Mark said. The words rang hollow in his ears. Not that they weren't meant, but that they were so utterly futile. But with each bony wrist handcuffed to a leg of the sturdy metal chair he sat in, he couldn't do much more than talk.

Ditmar turned him a wet smile. "Perhaps I am, Doctor," he admitted, "because I find myself even more excited at the prospect of violating such a beautiful innocent while her own father watches."

Mark squealed wordless outrage and tried to hurl himself at the torturer. His legs got tangled up with the legs of the chair, and he fell heavily on his side on the floor, nearly wrenching his arms from their sockets.

He had, it seemed, achieved the theoretical maximum for failure. His drugs were under a desk in the lab, he had created a virus which might wipe out all of humanity, and now he was about to watch his daughter be raped and tortured to death. After all that, anything Ditmar did to him would be child's play.

He had created the Overtrump, of course, and seemed to have succeeded in arranging to have the Card Sharks themselves release it. But that was a victory so hollow as mainly to accentuate defeat: he didn't know a whole lot about the rates at which epidemics spread, and couldn't have said whether the fact that there were three cylinders of Black Trump to one of Overtrump suggested that the lethal virus would spread three times as fast. But he was morally certain that before the day was over he would have murdered millions more people than he had saved.

Ditmar had his trousers pooled around his ankles and one foot lifted off the floor as he fumbled with his shoe. He had a certain grace despite his bulk. At least he managed to stay balanced.

"Later," he said to Mark, wrenching one shoe off and tossing it aside, "later I will play. And then, who knows? I may find myself once again in the mood for love."

Mark glared at him from the floor. He pulled off the other shoe. "You could try to run, you know," he said to Sprout. "You're an athletic girl, despite your mental condition; you look fit and strong and so lithe. You might even get past me."

He dropped the shoe and stepped out of his trousers. "Of course, you'd be caught. And then I would have to hurt you. But that's the fun."

"Leave her alone," Mark begged, "please. I'll give you anything."

Ditmar stopped with hands on hips, looking comical and sinister in gray-green undershirt, boxer shorts, and black socks held up by garters. "Ach, so? And what have you, a bound prisoner, to give me? Nothing except your daughter's lovely body. And I am about to have that anyway."

He chuckled at his own wit. "No, Herr Doktor, the best thing you can give me now is your undivided attention." He turned bade to Sprout. She lay there in an artless sprawl, jeans-clad legs wide, T-shirt hiked up to bare her flat belly. He clucked and shook his head "Ah, but you do not comprehend what lies in store, do you, child?"

He advanced toward the bed. His thighs were bluish-white in the fluorescent light, with a translucent sheen like dough. Sprout backed away till her head hit the wall, then wriggled into a sitting position as Ditmar knelt on the bed astride her legs.

Mark was baying like a dog, yelling at the German to leave her alone. Ditmar gave him a smirk over his shoulder, then clasped the front of Sprout's T-shirt with pale sausage fingers and wrenched. The thin fabric tore away from the collar. Beneath it she wore a simple white bra.

The torturer watched her warily, in case she tried for his eyes. But she just stared at him and tried to squirm away, little mewing sounds came from her mouth. He liked that; the front of his boxer shorts was tented out visibly.

Ditmar held up his right hand, pressed a button on a flat oblong object he'd been holding concealed. A blade snapped into place.

"Get away from her!" Mark screamed hoarsely. Sprout froze, started to raise her right hand.

"No, liebchen," the German breathed. "Do not be afraid. I will not hurt you. Yet."

He put the tip of the knife against her sternum and brought it sharply up. The reinforced elastic holding the cups of the bra together gave way. The bra fell away. Her breasts tumbled free, large and pink-nippled.

"Ach," Ditmar breathed reverently. "Wie schon, wie schon."

He ran the knife-tip down her flat belly. Her flesh shrank from the steel caress. When he reached the hem of her white cotton panties he dug in the point, not quite hard enough to pierce the skin. She uttered a squeak of pain and terror.

"Still, liebchen," Ditmar said huskily. "Remain very still."

He cut through the elastic-reinforced hem at the waist. Methodical as a surgeon he cut the panties down the side, then sliced through the elastic around her thigh. She held almost comically still, like a child playing a game of freeze tag.

He ripped the panties open, stared down a moment at her as if transfixed, then cut open the other side. Mark was too hoarse to make any more noise. He could only lie on his side blowing like a marathon runner and wishing he could make himself not watch.

The German pressed his stiletto under Sprout's short ribs and buried his face between her breasts. She screamed. He pressed the knife in harder and began to move his face side to side, slavering sticky-slimy saliva all over her breasts with a tongue like a swatch of wet motel carpet.

Sprout put her head back and closed her eyes. Her fingers clutched at Ditmar's fat back. Mark's eyes bugged out as his daughter ground her pelvis into the German and moaned "Fuck me! Ooh, fuck me hard!"

Ditmar reared back like a startled horse. Then he whinnied "Himmel! Herr Gott sei Dank!" and buried his face at the base of her neck, dry-humping madly away.

Sprout wrapped her right arm around him, pinning him to her as she writhed beneath him. Her left hand was free. Mark watched in disbelief that turned to horror as the forefinger extended, straightened - and grew, morphing like a computer-generated movie effect into a six-inch needle of bone.

So this is it, Mark thought, clear thought-stream among the rushing turbulence of voices in his skull. This is madness.

Sprout grabbed the thinning hair at the back of Ditmar's skull, tugged. He raised his head. "Ja, liebchen?" he said. His mustache was matted with spit.

She drove the bone needle into his right ear.

As he convulsed she eeled from under him and jumped off the bed. "Jesus, that's gross," she said. She looked down at droplets of blood on her breasts, while she shook gore and brain-bits from her finger, which had resumed its normal dimensions. "I'm glad he kept his damn drawers on."

Mark had drawn his head into his shirt collar as far as it would go, like a gaunt, ungainly turtle seeking shelter. His first thought was that Sprout had somehow turned up her own ace, and been transformed into some kind of bizarre shapeshifting killer slut. Now he didn't know what to think. "What the hell are you?" he choked as soon as he could form words.

"Oh, nobody, really," "Sprout" said. She turned and walked to a mirror hung over the dresser. "When you last saw me, I was O.K. Casaday. You can call me Creighton."

Mark stared at the creature. In spite of lifelong efforts to avoid doing anything that might in modern cant be called inappropriate, he had seen his daughter naked. She had a young child's dislike for the restraints imposed by clothing, and while patient explanation had gotten her to be more modest around strangers, sometimes when they were alone together she would forget herself and come popping out of her room wearing only one sock, or her T-shirt, or her pink fuzzy bunny slippers.

This was not Mark's daughter, as if any doubt remained. Her body was built even leaner, and her skin had a glossier, harder look to it than Sprout's. The breasts were high, conical, and suspiciously firm. She looked, he realized, like Barbie with a bush.

"Sprout doesn't look like an exotic dancer with augments," Mark said accusingly. "You got an unenlightened view of women, man."

"Oh, yeah?" "Sprout" was frowning into the mirror. "If you're so pure, how come you know what a stripper with a boob job looks like, hmmm?"

"She glanced back at the dead German. Mark gasped; the outlines of Sprout's face had become grotesquely puffy, as though she had the mumps.

"Where's my daughter?"

"Back in California by now." Creighton walked over to kneel by the body and peer at its face.

"What are you talking about? California? How?"

Creighton stood. He had already begun to resemble the corpse more than Mark's daughter. The swollen head looked horrific atop the lithe, naked female body. He returned to the mirror. "We had it all set up to rescue you guys, back in Burma, so when we crashed the wire in the Cherokee all I had to do was hand her over to our friendly elves. Of course, she might've been sold into slavery in Bangkok, but I doubt it. That ex-NVA topkick we hired to straw boss the local talent seemed the sort who'd be too damned proud to do anything other than what he said he'd do. And anyway, I already promised him a boatload of money if he helped us get you or your daughter back safe."

A bomb burst behind Mark's eyes. The shrapnel was flower petals, like something from the Summer of Love. Sprout. Is safe.

"Thank God," Mark breathed. Then, "So that was you all the time?" He started feeling queasy all over again.

Ditmar's eyes rose to the mirror and caught his on the bounce. "Yean. And don't start making faces. Think about how I felt, with you all the time trying to slobber on me. Not to mention him." A feminine hand waved at the body.

"So that's why Sprout was so cold to me!" Mark said with a smile.

"Well, yeah."

"Why did you go back?"

"If you were there, you were working on the fucking Black Trump. I wanted to stay as close as possible and hope I got a break." He shrugged. "I didn't, till now."

He turned back to the body for a final inspection. To Mark he was already indistinguishable from the dead man ... from the neck up.

He looked at Mark with Ditmar's frog eyes. "I heard some guards laughing about what you did to Sascha. I guess I should feel grateful, since you did it to save me, even if you didn't know it was me. Still ..."

Mark's face split into a huge, manic grin. "But I saved Sascha too! I made, like, an Overtrump, right under that evil little weasel Jarnavon's pointy nose. I injected him with a counter to the Black Trump, not the Trump."

"From what they said Sascha's pretty sick," Creighton said doubtfully.

"Yeah. It's like the original vaccination, man, what Jenner did way back before Pasteur was even born. I gave him a dose of the same flu I hooked the Trump to. Only he won't die of this strain. And when he gets over it, he'll have antibodies to keep him from getting the real thing."

Creighton blinked, grinned. "Good one, Doctor. Maybe we haven't lost all the wild cards."

Mark bit his lip. He didn't have the heart to tell the strange ace that the stakes had gotten a little higher. "They're gonna hijack a blimp at the airport and release the Trump over Hong Kong," Mark said. "We better hurry."

Creighton-Ditmar nodded, glanced down at Sprout's bare breasts. "Time for the rest of the process, Doc," he said. "You might, uh, want to turn your head."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

The wind whistled like an invisible chorus, kicking up clouds of sand that swirled like gritty fog as Croyd came to a screeching halt in front of a tall, ridged sand dune.

"We're here," Croyd announced.

"Jesus, my butt hurts," Ray said as he slid to the ground. He helped Harvest off and they both walked around a bit, stretching and groaning.

"The camp is right over that dune," Croyd said, pointing with his snout. "I'm going to get that bastard Rudo."

"You and what other circus animal?" Ray asked. "Look, if it's that damned important I'll bring him to you trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. After we find and destroy the Trump."

Croyd seemed mollified, but it was difficult to tell with a camel. "All right," he said.

The darkness and the sandstorm made their job easier, providing them with cover, masking the noise made by their approach, and keeping most of the Nur's people in their tents. They hunkered down behind a low dune, Ray peering through eyes shaded against the blowing grit.

"Well, there it is," he said. "Anything took unusual, out of place?"

Harvest looked at him. "How would I know? I'm from Manhattan."

"Damn," Ray said. "We should have brought along some locals. Well, why don't we start with the big tent? It looks important."

"All right," Harvest said. "That's as likely a candidate as any."

Ray went first, scuttling low like a crab across the floor of some waterless primordial sea. Harvest followed. They skirted the camp, keeping to the shadows and shifting dunes, moving silently. Once they saw a lurking guard, but he was more interested in keeping out of the blowing sand than guarding anything. They left him huddled, miserably trying to find some shelter in the lee of a tent. When they reached the big tent near the middle of the camp they stopped to catch their breaths.

"I'll go in first," Ray said in a low voice. He hesitated a moment. "How about a kiss for luck?"

Harvest shook her head. "Not until you get your face fixed."

Ray grinned. "I'll hold you to that. And a lot more."

There was no way he could get into the tent quietly, so he did it quickly. He dove in, banging the door open, hit the ground, rolled, and came up to see a young man, a boy realty, sitting on a pile of cushions and writing in a notebook. He looked up, surprised and irritated at Ray's unexpected entrance.

"Who are you?" he asked with a frown.

"I'll ask the questions, dork," Ray said. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Rudo. Dr. Pan Rudo."

Ray grinned. "No you're not. You're busted."

He heard Harvest come through the door.

"We've got the Shark bastard," he told her.

And something exploded against the back of his head, and Ray thudded to the floor, unconscious.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Rudo had left the lab last night, carrying a little inhaler in his hand. He'd drafted two of the older women for infirmary duty. They hadn't come out yet.

The sandstorm had returned, the simoom, whose name meant "forty," for it always felt forty days long, or so they said in Jerusalem. The storm hissed through the camp like a maddened dervish, and Zoe blessed it for the cover it might give her.

Paolo was confined to the infirmary tent with the jokers. Rudo hadn't left the infirmary all day - he was still inside. Near the entrance to the infirmary, a tarp had been stretched over a table. Two basins waited there, and stacks of green gowns, gloves, and masks.

Zoe stayed in the shelter of the women's tent until she saw Zahid leave the lab and stagger to his tent, his arms raised over his face to protect it from the stinging sand. Zoe went toward the empty lab tent as if she had night work to do there. The guard outside huddled with his back to the wind. He didn't ask why she carried her pack with her. She was one of those western devil scientists, after all.

Zoe opened the airlock seals and stepped into the lab. The mask she grabbed felt comforting on her face. She pulled on gloves, but no clean suit. The fans on the negative pressure hood were shut down, all dangerous materials stowed for now, or so she hoped.

In the Coleman refrigerator, inhalers of Black Trump waited, right where Rudo had told her they would be. Fourteen inhalers, in a box with places for sixteen. This was all Rudo and Zahid had managed to make? It couldn't be, not after all the work they'd done -

Rudo had said sixteen - he'd sworn that was all there was. "It's such a tricky little virus, so fragile," Rudo had told her. "But if carefully used, it will be enough. Each victim creates the next, isn't that lovely?" During that drunken ride across the dunes he'd talked about the Nur's promise to send infected volunteers on commercial flights - and then even a small quantity could blanket the world, for the virus multiplied easily in human hosts.

Zoe grabbed the little box and counted the inhalers again. Fourteen! Rudo had taken one to the joker tent. Someone else had the fifteenth vial.

Her hands shook. She almost dropped one of the bottles. One at a time, she set them in the autoclave, sealed its door, and punched the controls for the longest cycle of killing heat the machine could produce.

Time to go. Whether or not Rudo had lied to her about the quantity of virus, she could feel pretty sure that no other lab worked on this horrid project. The desert camp had all the Trump that existed; she had to believe that. Get home, tell the Dog to destroy every living thing in this place - beg him to use his goddamned nuke?

See, Zoe? What you have become? You are going to beg the Black Dog to use a nuclear device on this camp, and you know there are innocents here.

Like the guard outside. I know it. Shut up, voice.

She had to have water if she was going to walk the desert. There were calculations for water loss that varied with exertion and heat, but Zoe didn't know them. She rummaged in the supply cabinet and taped four rectangular plastic IV bags of sterile water around her middle, two bags on each thigh. She sloshed when she walked, but the bags didn't show under her robe.

Now. Get out of the bubble dome without collapsing it. Zoe picked up a scalpel and walked to the back of the enclosure, tasting freedom beyond the plastic barrier. She breathed on the sharp blade, instructing it. It cut smoothly through the tough plastic. Zoe slipped under the edge of the dome and pulled her pack through the opening. The dome sealed itself behind her. One stroke of her little blade sliced through the goathair tent that concealed the dome.

"Good timing, Zoe," a voice whispered. A camel stuck his head through the slit in the tent. "I was looking for you."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

When Ray came to he found himself wrapped in chains like some kind of fucking mummy.

"What the hell?" he said groggily. He squinted, trying to focus his eyes. Harvest and Rudo were sitting side by side on a pile of cushions, drinking from tea cups.

"He's awake," Rudo said.

Harvest shook her head. "His skull must be harder than I thought."

"April? What the hell is going on?"

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "God, Ray, do I really have to explain it to you?"

Ray felt like he'd been smashed in the head again; pounded flat by Crypt Kicker, and gutted by Mackie Messer, all at the same time.

"You're a Shark," he said in a sick voice. "You're a fucking Shark."

"Oooo. Give the man a prize for deductive reasoning."

Rudo snorted.

Ray surged against his chains, but he couldn't break them. His ankles were bound together, his arms were wrapped from elbow to wrist behind his back. He couldn't bring any traction or leverage to bear. He flopped around like a gaffed fish, then stopped, panting for breath, when he realized that Harvest was laughing at him.

"Have you ever tested the Trump on an ace, Dr. Rudo?" Harvest asked.

"Well," Rudo said. "There was Crypt Kicker. Of course, he was already dead when we exposed him to it. And I never did get a chance to observe the final results."

"Well, here we have the perfect specimen." She picked up a small device from Rudo's desk. It looked like a nasal sprayer. She squatted down in front of Ray and smiled. "Well, lover, I guess it's good-bye. You know, I did kind of enjoy our time together. The fact that I knew I was going to kill you soon did add a certain poignancy to our love-making."

"Bitch," Ray spat.

Harvest shook her head. "You're really not very bright, are you?" she said, and sprayed him right in the face.

Rudo checked his watch, scribbled in his book. "This should be interesting."

"I'll kill you both," Ray promised through gritted teeth.

"Sure you will." Harvest turned to Rudo. "Shall I take care of that fucking camel for you before I go?"

Rudo nodded. "No need. He'll make an interesting test subject. A pity about Zoe, though. You can't trust anyone these days." He sighed. "Hafaz will give you the keys to the water truck. Drive safely, now. No sense taking unnecessary risks at this late stage of the game. In a week or so there should be no more wild carders."

Harvest smiled. "It's been an honor working with you, doctor."

Rudo kissed her on the cheek. "Me, too, dear. I hope we meet again very soon."

"I do, too." She stopped, looked down at Ray. "Bye, lover. I'm off to spread cheer across the city of Jerusalem. I'd kiss you good-bye, but I'm afraid you're just too damn ugjy now."

"I'll see you again," Ray promised.

Harvest laughed. "Right." She opened the door and disappeared into the night.

"Lovely girl," Rudo said as she left.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

It was definitely a camel. It looked like a camel. It smelled like a camel. It talked.

Zoe looked up from where she crouched in the narrow space between the plastic dome and the tent wall. This apparition wasn't her new-found inner voice speaking. So it had to be - "Croyd?" Zoe asked.

"Yeah."

"Are you alone?"

"I am now. I brought Carnifex and April Harvest in to bust up the camp. I was supposed to come in and get them out, but April took off in the water truck and I can't find Billy Ray anywhere."

"The water truck? That's all the water there is here."

"So they'll dry up. They aren't on our side, Zoe. Where's Rudo? As soon as I kill him, we can leave."

"You're taking me out of here?"

"Yeah. Where is he?"

Zoe shoved her pack through the slit in the tent and crawled out behind it. Even seen through the dense murk of blowing sand, Croyd was a disaster. He was as tall as your average camel, but most camels had four legs. Croyd had eight, and no hands.

"Shhh!" Zoe hissed. "There are guards out here. Are you crazy?"

"I'm not crazy. I'm not exactly happy being a camel, either. But don't worry about yelling. Nobody can hear a damned thing in this wind." He brayed like a camel, and the camels tied in their temporary pen didn't bray back. "Where's Rudo?"

"We can't wait to kill Rudo. We've got to get out of here. Let the Black Dog do this!"

"Let the Black Dog do what? Kill Rudo? No way."

"I've destroyed most of Rudo's stash of Trump, but I can't find it all," Zoe said. "Croyd, I don't know where all of it is! We've got to let the Black Dog burn this camp to the ground and everyone in it. Is this April Harvest on our side?"

"I think so. I thought so."

He had a camel's way of working his jaw back and forth. She wondered if his new physiology equipped him to eat grass and chew his cud.

"If you're not sure - We've got to get back to Jerusalem. Fast."

"As soon as I find the bastard. Which tent?" Croyd asked. He took off at a lope, apparently unworried about guards with guns. Who would believe they saw an eight-legged camel in a sandstorm, anyway? Still, they might shoot first and decide they were seeing things afterward. Zoe lost sight of Croyd in the storm. She ran, and hoped no dedicated guard would shoot her.

Where would he go first?

She caught up with him as he reached the table in front of the infirmary tent. He was pushing his nose, er, muzzle against the tent flap when she tackled a pair of his legs. Croyd kicked. Zoe went sprawling. One of the basins tipped over, splattering water in all directions. A stack of clean gowns and masks fell to the sand. Camel Croyd backed up and nosed at a plastic jug of chlorine bleach.

"Smells bad," Croyd whispered. "Why did you try to trip me, Zoe?"

"You could die in there. At least put a mask on," Zoe hissed. She reached for one and waved it at him.

He lowered his long neck. Zoe pulled the elastic band over the back of his head and fitted his snout into the mask.

But he couldn't open the tent flap without her help.

"Let me in there, he pleaded. "Please, Zoe. Help me."

Help him get them both killed? But he was her only way out, and he wasn't going to budge until he'd found Rudo, or made a good hard try. Zoe pulled the tent flap aside. Light spilled out into the clouds of wind-borne dust Zoe heard nothing inside, not a sound. The camel shifted his bulk and nudged his way into the tent.

"Oh, God!" Croyd said. "Oh, God."

Zoe struggled into a gown and a mask. She pulled on a pair of gloves, stretching the left one over her aluminum and white flannel splint, and followed Croyd.

Croyd stood just inside the gloomy space. He blinked constantly, as it he were trying to clear his vision. The yellow light cast by a Coleman lantern was too bright, terrible, merciless. No detail was hidden.

They were all dead, and they had died horribly. Something in the Black Trump caused a breakdown in the clotting system. The cots were soaked with thin blood. The jokers had bled from every orifice, even from their tear ducts. Dry streaks of brownish red tracked the matted fur on the face of the mink-man. He had died with his eyes open, staring at eternity.

The walls of the tent billowed, pushed by the wind outside. Runnels of sand made their way across the tarps that had been spread for flooring.

On it, two dark heaps lay - the two women from Zoe's tent, drafted as nurses by the kind Dr. Rudo. She took a cautious step toward them, knowing even before she really looked. They had pulled aside their veils, forgetting modesty in a struggle for air to fill their bubbling lungs. Their faces had been beautiful, Zoe realized, before the Trump had sucked away the fluids from their skins and left only these sagging, skeletal masks behind it.

They were dead.

Rudo hadn't told them to mask or gown. They weren't trained nurses, and they were nats. It would be like him to let them catch the Trump. To see how they reacted. After all, nats were supposed to only get a mild case of the flu....

"He's not here," Croyd said.

"It kills nats," Zoe whispered. "The fucking Black Trump kills nats."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"Out uff der vay, svinehunds!"

A pair of technicians looked up with frightened eyes at the bizarre pair approaching: the tall skinny American with his hands cuffed behind his back, the dumpy German brandishing a Makarov. They scooted away down the cement-walled hallway and were gone.

"Piece of cake," Creighton whispered.

"Jesus, man, that's like the worst German accent ever. You sound like the bad guy in some old Republic serial."

"It worked on them," Creighton said smugly.

"Yeah, but they're Chinese."

"Shudt upp," Creighton said in his ghastly Katzenjammer kids accent. "Ve're dere."

Mark rolled his eyes. "Ditmar" reached past him to open the door to the examining room.

Sascha lay on his back on a metal examining table, shackled to it by one wrist. He moaned softly. He wore only his boxer shorts, and his pallid body was coated in sweat. Despite a heavy smell of disinfectant the room stank; he had soiled himself.

A Chinese med-tech and an Occidental goon sat around reading Asian porn mags from Hong Kong. They looked up in surprise.

"Out!" "Ditmar" bellowed. "Go! I will tage ofer now!" He gesturing toward the door with the pistol. The pair went rabbiting out of it. "See?" Creighton's voice asked. "They went for my accent, too."

"They went for that gun you were waving around," Mark said. He let go of the unlocked handcuffs, which he had been holding almost closed around his wrists, and tossed them into a wastebasket.

"Meadows?" Sascha asked, turning his head left and right as though looking for his partner. "Jerry!" he said.

"In the flesh. That fat sadist's flesh, at the moment. I'm not going to have to worry any more about forgetting myself and trying to take a pee standing up."

"You stupid son of a bitch, Meadows!" Sascha screamed, spittle flying from his mouth. "You give me that hoodoo bug, I spend three hours in absolute hell, and I don't even die! What the hell kind of mad scientist are you?"

"Reluctant," Creighton said, casting around the examining room. "Sounds as if you're feeling better now, anyway, old man. Where are the keys to those cuffs?"

"In the pocket of the guy you chased out," Sascha said sourly.

"Well, okay." Creighton held up the Makarov and jacked the slide. A gleaming golden cartridge came flipping out the side and bounced ringing on the floor.

"Shit," Creighton said, "that never happens when they do it in the movies."

"It already had a round in the chamber, you ninny."

"'Ninny'?" Creighton echoed. "You sure don't have much touch for invective, Doc. At least get with the nineties and call me a dickweed, or something."

He extended the pistol, closed one eye, and took aim at the handcuffs that bound Sascha to the table.

"Give me that," Mark said, and astonished himself by reaching out and snatching the pistol out of Creighton's pudgy hand.

"Hey!" Creighton yelped, grabbing at the weapon.

"What were you planning to do with that, anyway?" Mark asked, fending him off with a long arm.

"Shoot the cuffs off him."

Mark slipped on the safety and stuck the Mak in a back jeans pocket. "No way."

"How are we going to get him loose? We don't have much time."

"You're the detective," Mark said. "Pick the lock or something."

Muttering seditiously, Ditmar bent down to examine the handcuffs.

The door opened and Layton walked in.

Mark hastily put his hands together behind his back. Layton stopped and blinked at him.

"Hey! What's he doin' here?" He glared at Ditmar, who straightened, dusting invisible lint from his shirtfront. "Aren't you supposed to be fucking his daughter?"

"Ja, ja," "Ditmar" said, waddling forward with his fat face wreathed in a comradely smile. "But I'm all done. Und I felt zo bad you got cheated I vas just comink to look for you."

He laid a hand on the kickboxer's shoulder. "It's your turn now."

Layton made a face. "Shit! I don't want her if she's all cut up and shit."

"No, no. I zaved dot. Ve do it later, maybe togezzer?" He was urging Layton toward the door. As he did, his forefinger stretched, narrowed, hardened.

Layton turned a suspicious frown back at him. "Say, you don't sound like - "

The fast-motion growth of the finger caught the corner of his eye. "Shit!" he exclaimed. He lashed out with a back kick that launched "Ditmar" across the room and against the wall.

Mark, who had expected about this turn of events, had slipped a hand down into his back pocket. Now he whipped out the Makarov.

He had always doubted he could bring himself to shoot a firearm at another human being. That was an odd scruple, he knew, given that as JJ Flash he had incinerated people. But he didn't like guns.

But now he had no problem. He pointed that stubby little Soviet handgun at the kickboxer and blazed away.

Unfortunately, he wasn't too clear on aiming. Layton dropped. The nine-millimeter bullets blew craters in the whitewashed cement wall and ricocheted around the room, whining like lost souls. Sascha yipped and rolled off the table, almost wrenching his arm out of the socket.

With frightening speed Layton rolled forward, swept Mark's feet out from under him with a long leg. Mark bounced off a chair and landed badly, but kept his grip on the Makarov. He tried to point it at Layton, but the kick-boxer was already on his feet again. He skipped forward as Mark's hand came on line, snapped the weapon from his hand with a crescent kick.

Layton grinned down at Mark. "Now we get to play," he said.

"Ditmar's" bulk landed square in the middle of his back. "But first, you valtz mit me!" Creighton shrilled in his hideous accent.

Without hesitation Layton gave Creighton an elbow in the eye. The shapeshifting ace squawked and fell on Ditmar's broad bum.

The momentary distraction was all Mark needed. He was on his feet and out the door, running for the lab with elbows pumping and all the speed in his long gangling legs.

"Jesus, Meadows, don't run out on us!" he heard Creighton yell. The cry was punctuated by a nasty thump and a groan.

Mark just ran. Gotta get to the lab, he thought. Got to get my drugs.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

It would seem Lord Tung's associates gave good paper.

Good enough to get them past Chinese customs at Guangzhou airport. Good enough to get the delivery truck waved through the chain link fence that enclosed the perimeter. Good enough to convince the bored and inattentive guard at the loading dock to admit them to the complex.

And then just when Jay was starting to figure maybe this was going to be a piece of ricecake, they'd come up against some asshole who actually gave a shit.

The Chinese lieutenant sat behind the security desk going over their documents with a fine-tooth comb. He didn't look the least bit inscrutable to Jay. In fact he looked hostile, verging on angry, and the way he kept holding up every requisition form and bill of lading to the light was making Jay squirm. The collar of Jay's lab coat was damp with sweat, and his horn-rimmed geek glasses kept slipping down his nose, spoiling the effect of his wonderful disguise. It wasn't as snazzy as a Domino's uniform, but it had gotten them this far, that and the paper and the computer monitors in cartons on the dollys behind him.

The Chinese lieutenant handed a bill of lading to the sergeant beside him, who began to check it against the numbers on his clipboard, running a thick finger down a column of figures. Jay would have loved to pop the suspicious son of a bitch off to some tollbooth on the Jersey Turnpike, only there were two privates with guns across the room watching their every move, and behind them a heavy steel door that looked extremely locked. The red eye of a security camera stared down from the ceiling.

The sergeant gave the bill of lading back to the lieutenant. The lieutenant asked Belew a rude question in Cantonese. Belew answered brusquely in the same language. Jay wished he understood what they were saying. His command of Chinese was limited to no tickee, no washee and that was probably Mandarin anyway. The lieutenant waved the paper in Belew's face and rattled off more Cantonese. Belew shouted something back. The lieutenant stood up, waved his arms, and shouted louder.

Jay pushed the horn-rims back up with the index finger of his right hand, just to get ready.

The lieutenant snapped an order. Orders sound the same in any language. One of the privates crossed the room and started to rip open the computer cartons. The lieutenant sat back down and picked up the telephone on the desk. "Casaday," he said.

Jay didn't need a translator for that. He dropped his finger. The lieutenant vanished with a pop. Before the phone hit the desk, Jay was whirling. The private by the door blinked out as he was bringing up his gun. The private by the cartons started to shout until two of Lord Tung's thugs grabbed him. Then he got very docile very fast. The sergeant kicked over his chair and fumbled for his pistol. Belew knocked the gun from his hand and slammed him back against the wall.

Jay saw the sergeant's eyes. He stepped closer and shoved his popping finger up into sarges right nostril. "Translate this," he told Belew. "Open the door, or else."

J. Bob did the honors, and all of a sudden the room smelled like an outhouse. As ace powers went. Jay's was almost harmless, but it often terrified those unfamiliar with it. When you see people suddenly cease to exist and you don't know that they have simultaneously reappeared on the pitcher's mound at Ebbets Field, it does tend to loosen the sphincter. The Chinese sergeant gibbered at Belew wildly. "He says only the lieutenant knew the combination."

"You believe him?"

"I can smell his sincerity. The bowels don't lie."

Alarm klaxons went off suddenly all around them. Jay jumped a foot. "Swell," he said, looking at Belew. "What's Cantonese for The shit has hit the fan?"

"Break out the guns," Belew ordered over the scream of the klaxons. One of Lord Tung's boys shoved the private to the floor. The others started opening cartons and smashing computer monitors. Glass flew everywhere.

Belew released the sergeant and crossed the room. He ripped the cover off the keypad beside the door. Then he put his pinky into his mouth and bit it off at the second knuckle. He spat the finger onto the floor and shoved the bloody stump into the wiring. Electricity arced and Jay caught a whiff of burning flesh. He felt his stomach lurch. Locks whirred, clicked, disengaged; the steel door slid open.

Behind them, Lord Tung's boys were pulling machine pistols out of the computer casings. Jay popped their captives to Times Square while Belew removed his bloody finger from the keypad. One of his associates tossed him a gun. He caught it in the air, checked the action, and looked at Jay. "Jay, do you want - "

"No," Jay said sharply. He'd been over this ground with Belew before. "My finger never jams, I don't have to reload it, and it's a lot quieter than your toys."

"I don't think quiet is an issue at this point, but suit yourself." Belew stepped through the door. Jay was right behind him. Corridors stretched off in three directions, and there was an elevator door to their left. There were no guards yet, but lots of guys in lab coats were peering out doors looking alarmed. Belew fired a burst into the ceiling and they looked a lot more alarmed and closed the doors. "There's no way to know where Casaday stashed the Black Trump," Belew shouted over the klaxons. "We'll have to split up, search room by room. I'll take this level. Mr. Ackroyd, down one." He yelled orders to Lord Tung's boys in crisp Cantonese.

Jay took the stairs two at a time. The klaxons were still hooting. They sounded a lot like the klaxons on Governor's Island. He tried to not think about that, considering how well that had come out. Two guards were running toward him when he burst out on the lower level. They raised their guns, but Jay raised his finger faster. He started jogging down the corridor, opening doors. He peeked into toilets, storerooms, laboratories, libraries, and lounges. Every time he saw a face, he popped it off to this little noodle place he knew on Mott Street. The more people he got rid of, the fewer would be left to sneak up on him from behind. Besides, the noodle place needed the business.

Halfway down the corridor, he heard shouting from around the corner. English shouting. Hard on its heels came a staccato burst or gunfire. Jay ran.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Down the echoing cement hall to the lab. Somewhere a klaxon began its mechanical-goose honk of distress. Mark yanked open the door and practically fell into the lab, wheezing, looking as if he were trying to take bites of badly-needed air with his big horse teeth.

Made it, he thought, bracing arms on a table for support. His lungs were fire, his legs water. Just let me catch my breath and everything'll be all right ...

A flicker in his peripheral vision, and something rang the side of his head like a bell.

Mark reeled. Or maybe the world was spinning around him. Blackness seemed to flash in his skull, and his vision contracted to a point. The warning horns had somehow gotten into his skull ...

Focus widened like a ripple from a stone dropped in a pool. The surrounding blue gave way to Layton, standing light on his feet in the lab, grinning at him.

"You tried to run out on me, Doc," the young man said with a big grin. "You didn't think I'd waste time farting with those two numbnuts back there, did you? The guards can take care of them."

Lithe as a figure skater he spun. Stiffened, his right leg swept back and up and around. The heel slammed into the side of Mark's neck and sent him sprawling, with great purple afterimage balloons exploding behind his eyes, as if somebody had popped a photoflash in his face.

The best part of that particular kick was that he never felt the impact when he hit the floor, light as a feather ...

He rolled over and began to crawl doggedly toward his workstation at the rear of the lab. The whole right side of his face was Novocain numb. He only noticed his nose was bleeding when he paused a moment to rest - so hard to move! - and noticed the red drops falling to the floor from his upper lip.

He felt himself lifted by the back of his work shirt. As if he were a child, Layton hoisted him onto his feet, let him sway a moment while he transferred his grip to the front of Mark's shirt. Then he drove a short black-gloved punch in under Mark's ribs.

Mark doubled. All the air exploded out of him. His eyes bugged out with the urgency of expelling more air than he had in him. It was the pulmonary equivalent of the dry heaves.

Layton straightened him right up with a rising elbow-smash to the face. "You know, Doctor," the kickboxer said, "I was real disappointed when Casaday ripped me off about that little girl of yours."

He gut-punched him again, this time keeping a grip so Mark couldn't fold or fall to the floor. "I don't do disappointment real well, Doctor. I used to be fucking light-heavyweight champion. I get what I want." For punctuation he slammed a backfist into Mark's temple and sent him flying.

Mark tried to gather himself. Some reptile-brain tropism made him turn and crawl, as by blind instinct, toward the back of the lab, toward his drugs. If they hadn't found them yet.

A flurry of footsteps, a thundering impact in the side, a spear of pain as Layton's kick broke ribs. Mark curled moaning about himself.

Move, damn you! JJ Flash urged from the depths of him. Don't give up!

Don't listen to him! came Cosmic Traveler's panicky rebuttal. You tried it your way, and now see what you've done! Give in - tell him about the Overtrump, everything. It's our only chance -

That did it. Mark made himself straighten out, though it felt as if his body was encased in ice interpenetrated with his own nerve-ends, so that when he moved and broke his brittle coating, he felt the pain of that, too. He got onto elbows and knees and crawled.

From some Olympian height he heard Layton's laugh. "That's it, Doc. Crawl like a fuckin' bug." He grabbed Mark's shirt, dragged him upright again.

"You look like a big old daddy bndegs," Layton said. "I used to pull the legs off those little fuckers for fun, when I was a kid."

He hit him then, both hands alternating, maybe half a dozen times bam-bam-bam, a machine-gun burst of blows to the face. Mark staggered back. Layton did a little skip, side-kicked Mark in the chest. Mark back-pedaled, slammed against the desk. He put his hand down for support, felt pain from his palm - a minor pain but penetrating, slicing through the raw red throb of agony that was his whole existence.

He looked down. For a moment his vision refused to focus. When it did he saw he had dropped his hand amid glass fragments from an imploded computer monitor.

Layton came and placed himself before Mark. He smiled at him, then jumped straight into the air. His right foot lashed out in a high kick that snapped Mark's teeth together and his head back and made sparks fly from his brain like an anvil.

Mark dropped. One arm flopped lifelessly beneath the desk.

And the fingertips encountered cool smoothness.

By enormous effort he turned the hand over, felt. Something firm yet giving, like flour. Felt through plastic. Further exploration suggested composite lumpinesses.

Layton stood above him admiring his handiwork. "Well," he said, "it's been real, Doc. But I think I'm going to finish beating you to death, and then find out just what happened to that hot-pants daughter of yours. Looks like her date with that creepy Kraut slob didn't work out ..."

Mark burrowed under the desk. He grabbed the plastic bag, tore at it with fingers that seemed to be swollen like balloon animals and have too may joints.

What are you doing now? Trav wailed. You haven't had a chance to test it! You don't even know what's there, much less if its pure -

He had gotten a bad batch of chemicals before. The result had been Monster, a horned horror seven stories tall, who sported a six-foot hard-on for the world and squeezed lightnings from his fists. Monster's sole purpose for existence was to spread the true gospel of Main Pain.

But then, Sprout was away, and safe. Creighton and Sascha, if they were still alive, would have to look out for themselves.

And beyond that, it was only Made and the bad guys.

"Come on out, Doc," Layton said. "You can't get away that easy," He grabbed Mark by the belt and started hauling him out.

Mark smiled a ghastly red-rimmed smile. Then he tore open the pouches and crammed random powders into his mouth.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

The first thing they teach you in detective school is never, never, never go running blindly into rooms where people are screaming in pain. Jay poked his head through me door cautiously, his finger ready.

A young blond guy with black gloves and a ponytail was hauling a broken scarecrow out from under a steel desk. The scarecrow was licking something off his fingers. His mouth was bloody and crusted with white powder. The guy with the ponytail had him by the leg.

Jay would have known the scarecrow anywhere.

"Mark," he said, stepping into the room, and hoping that Ponytail would let go of Mark's leg so Jay could pop him off. Big mistake. Big, big mistake.

Ponytail let go of Mark Meadows all right, but he moved too fast for Jay to get a bead, in a whirling, leaping spin that ended when he planted a foot deep in Jay's solar plexus. The breath went out of him in a rush and Jay doubled over, trying to point. Ponytail screamed and leaped again, and this time Jay got a knee in the face. Right on his bandaged, broken nose. The worid became a red wash of pain; Jay went down hard.

The lab seemed to be spinning. There was a rushing sound, a roaring of vast winds. Jay closed his eyes, opened them again. Light was flashing all around him, strobing painfully. Either he'd died and gone to disco hell or Pony-tail had hit him really hard, Jay thought as he tried to roll under a lab bench.

Then he heard Ponytail mutter, "What the fuck?" Jay blinked and tried to focus through the pain. That was when he realized there was a tornado in the lab.

It was black as the twister that had swept Dorothy off to Oz, alive with strange lightnings, howling, sweeping up papers and cigarette butts and small items of glassware. Overhead, the fluorescent lights started to blow up, one by one, until only the ragged strobe of the lightning remained to light the darkness. Petri dishes and test tubes were cracking to pieces, and a computer monitor imploded with a crunch. Ponytail spun at every sound. The darkness seemed to shiver. The world became a negative of itself. The tornado was a shrieking white wind full of dark splotches. Ponytail grabbed on to a lab table.

In the eye of the storm stood a tall man, glowing black, alive with energy. He raised his arms and threw his head back as the lightnings stabbed at him, feeding him. For a second Jay thought it was Mark Meadows, but the face was younger, smoother, beardless. The man's skin was translucent, and Jay could see the bones inside him glowing like neon, and the ghostly play of muscles. Sparks danced through his long hair. He was laughing.

One of Mark's friends, Jay thought wildly, but which one? Something wasn't right here. He'd seen Mark transform on Takis, but it had never been anything like this.

The laughing man seemed to drink the storm. The winds died and all of a sudden the world and Jay's stomach turned rightside out again. White was white, black was black, the wind was gone, the room was dark, and Jay's face hurt like a son of a bitch. He grabbed the edge of the lab bench and tried to pull himself to his feet. "Mark?" he said uncertainly.

"Mark is gone," an unfamiliar voice replied.

A shining youth stepped into the light, graceful and golden. He was as tall as Mark Meadows, and as blond, but there the resemblance ended. He was young, no more than nineteen, clean shaven and barechested, as slender and smoothly muscular as a Greek statue. Long, straight hair fell down past his shoulders. He wore sandals and faded jeans cut off just below the knee, and around his neck hung a heavy golden peace symbol on a leather thong. Jay had never seen him before. "Are you one of Mark's friends?"

"The first and the last," the golden youth replied. His smile was brilliant. He had deep blue eyes that had never known defeat or disappointment. Charisma seemed to come off him in waves.

Ponytail stepped out of the darkness. "The last is right, you hippie freak." He was tall and blond too, but somehow he looked like a bad copy of the other, the golden one. "So who are you, Surfer Jesus?"

"Last time I made the scene, they called me the Radical."

"I think I'll call you Pansy Boy," Ponytail said.

"From a fascist cocksucker like you, that's a compliment."

Ponytail put his hands on his hips. "So what do you do? Walk through walls? Fly? Shoot fire out your dick?"

"You sure you want to find out?" Radical asked softly.

Ponytail vaulted a lab table and landed right in front of him. He raised gloved fists into some kind of kung fu chop-socky ready stance. "Try me, you ace freak."

"Are you some kind of fucking moron?" Jay inteijected. They both ignored him.

"You're just a nat," Radical told Ponytail. "What do you think you're going to do to me?"

"This," Ponytail said. He slammed his right shin against Radical's left thigh in a savage kick. Radical grunted and dropped to one knee. Ponytail spun and kicked him in the chest. Radical went sprawling. Ponytail stood back and laughed. "How do you like me now, baby?"

Radical sat up, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth, but still smiling. "Dead," he said.

"Ooooh, I'm scared," Ponytail said. He circled around his prey, savoring the moment.

Jay shaped a shaky hand into a gun. "Enough," he said.

Radical waved him off. "Let him have his fun."

"Get up, pussy," Ponytail told him.

Radical got up.

Jay had had enough of this bullshit; he was practically suffocating on the testosterone fumes in here. He pointed to pop Ponytail off to Bellevue where he belonged ...

... and missed. Ponytail was moving.

He leaped, spinning, a high kick that would snap Radical's neck like a rotten stick. His foot slammed into the side of the youth's smiling face ... and went right through it. Off balance, Ponytail went down hard hitting the floor with a thud.

Jay tried to pop him again, but Ponytail rolled. A lab bench behind him vanished instead. Ponytail arched his body backward and popped upright like a jack-in-the-box as Radical charged. Radical's left fist snapped out in a jab that flashed past the kickboxer's guard, hit him in the face with a sickening crunch. Ponytail somersaulted backwards, away from him. Jay moved his hand dropped his thumb, missed again. "Hold still, damn it," he said.

Ponytail came up behind a lab table with his jaw hanging loose from his face, and blood dripping from his mouth. He didn't look like he was having fun anymore. One hand went behind his back. It came out holding a chunky black machine pistol.

The peace-sign amulet was in Radical's left hand. He spun it once around his head and released it as Ponytail aimed his piece. The amulet struck the handgun and shattered it.

Jay had a bead on Ponytail, but suddenly Radical was between them. He flew over the lab table, seized Ponytail by the throat, and lifted him off the ground with one hand. The kickboxer recovered sufficiently to drive a knee into the short ribs on Radical's right side. Radical grunted in pain. "That hurt."

Ponytail kicked him again. Radical's fingers were still locked around his throat, digging deep into his flesh. The kick was weaker this time. Ponytail's face was darkening.

"Drop him," Jay shouted at Radical. "Let me pop him off, damn it." No one paid the slightest bit of attention.

Ponytail clawed at Radical's eyes and kicked him again, feebly.

"Third strike," Radical said. "I guess you're out."

His hand burst into flame. Ponytail screamed. The fire streamed up Radical's fingers, and the kickboxer's throat began to blacken and char. An instant later his hair caught fire.

"Mark, no," Jay screamed. "Let him go!"

"I'm not Mark," the Radical replied, but he did let him go. The kickboxer's whole head was wreathed in flame as Radical flung him away, contemptuously. Ponytail flew across the lab and struck the wall with a sound like a cement truck hitting a German shepherd. For a moment he hung there, crucified sans nails, staring at Radical until his eyes melted and ran down his cheeks. The laboratory was bright as day, its shadows lit with the light of the burning man. The sprinklers came on suddenly.

"Jesus Christ," Jay said softly. His mouth tasted of blood. Water ran down his face like a cold rain, stinging his eyes.

For a moment Radical just stood and breathed. When the body peeled off the wall and fell heavily to the tiled floor, he turned to Jay. "What time is it?" he asked softly.

"7:34," came the answer, crisp and certain. J. Bob Belew stood in the door, outlined against the light from the corridor. "So Mark really was the Radical," he said, bemused.

The Radical made a V shape with his fingers. "Peace, man," he said. The water from the sprinklers plastered his long hair to his face, but his eyes were as hot and blue as the Summer of Love.

"Right, you're a regular fucking Gandhi," Jay snapped.

The Radical gave a shrug. "He was a genocidal fascist," he said as Arnold Schwarzenegger entered the lab, supporting a battered, bloody Sascha Starfin.

"Jerry!" Jay moved to his junior partner, dizzy from pain. "You're alive." He blinked. "What kind of asshole stunt did you think you were trying to pull? You're fired, both of you."

"You can't fire me, I'm your partner," Arnold rumbled in a bad Austrian accent. "Besides, we're all going to die. Casaday is on his way to the airport with enough Black Trump to kill every wild card in Hong Kong."

Jay groaned. He felt like lying down someplace for a long time, but forever was a shade too long. "I can't believe we went through all this shit just to lose!"

The Radical was smiling. "Keep the faith, Jay. We shall overcome, man. Sascha knows."

The telepath raised his eyeless face. "Meadows came up with a cure for the Black Trump. He thinks of it as the Overtrump."

"Straight dope," agreed the Radical. "Only one problem. Casaday took that too."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Ray jerked and pulled against the chains, but they wouldn't give. He had to do something, he couldn't just lie there and die. The revelation of Harvest's real nature and feelings gnawed at him more deeply than the knowledge that he'd taken a dose of the Black Trump right in the face. But Ray responded to her betrayal like he did to all the great fears and disappointments in his life. He got angry, then he got angrier. He pulled against his chains until he was soaked with sweat, but they didn't break.

He was held fast. He was going to die on the floor of this fucking tent, murdered by the woman he loved.

Rudo suddenly straightened up at his desk. "Does it feel a little warm in here?" he asked. Ray looked at him and stopped struggling. He laughed aloud. "What's so funny?" Rudo asked.

"I may be going to die," Ray said, "but you won't live to see it."

"What do you mean?"

"You're sweating, doc. You're sweating blood."

Rudo put a hand to his forehead, then looked at his palm. "Oh my God," he said in a small, quiet voice. "Oh my God."

Ray laughed again. He pulled at his chains like a mad dog and a searing pain ran through his right arm as he felt bones snap. He yanked at the chains, catching his breath as his broken arm twisted, creating enough slack so that he was able to pull his arms free.

The broken arm dangled limply. Pain danced through it like fire, but he ignored it. He could use his good arm, now, to help supply leverage, and there was nothing, nothing by God, that could tie him down. His body bent like a bow, the chains the bowstring he pulled taut, and something was going to snap, either his spine or the chains. It proved to be the chains, though when Ray heard the crack he wasn't sure. He lay panting on the floor and realized that the longer he stayed there the more likely he was to die.

He opened his eyes. Rudo was sitting at his desk with a stricken expression, but he held a gun pointed right at Ray.

"You'll stay right there, Mr. Ray, and we'll die together. Or move, and you'll die first."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Camel Croyd wheeled on his eight legs and took off into the sandstorm at a rate of speed that was unreal. Rudo should have been in the infirmary tent. He wasn't there, and it looked like Croyd would check every tent in the camp.

She trotted off in the direction she thought he'd taken, grateful for the mask she wore. It kept some of the dust out of her lungs, but her eyes watered like crazy. She couldn't wipe the tears away; her gloves might have picked up some of the virus.

Rudo's voice stopped her cold at the entrance to the Nur's tent.

"... or move and you'll die first," Rudo said. His quiet tones sent chills down her spine.

Zoe ripped aside the curtains.

Rudo, pale, sweaty, and terribly ill, lay slumped against a pile of cushions, facing Zoe. He held a gun aimed at the man who lay on the floor in front of him, a muscular joker with fused fingers, a horrid face, and something very wrong in the way one of his fists fitted on his arm.

His arm was broken. The joker lay in a loose tangle of chains.

A camel appeared beside her, a camel wearing a surgical mask. Croyd stopped short at the sight of Rudos gun.

Rudo smiled through blood-stained teeth. "One should see angels when one is dying, not camels. Always, the clerics lie.

"I'm Croyd. Remember me?"

Rudo's smile faded. He seemed to find some reserves of strength, enough to lift his gun in both hands and aim it at Croyd's head.

Zoe saw only the gun, the possibilities of it. Get the gun. Kill the gun. This is no time to die. Kill the gun, how? There were two aluminum bars inside the flannel of her splint - Yes! She kept her eyes on the gun and raised her arms slowly, hoping Rudo would think she was making a gesture of surrender. She breathed on the splint as she raised her arm, reworking the blunt metal into sharp points and instructing them with a hunger for arterial blood.

They ripped free of the flannel and buried themselves in the pumping arteries of Pan Rudo's right wrist.

The gun flew into the air and the joker twisted onto his back and caught the gun in his fused mitten of a hand. Croyd shoved his way past Zoe and leaned his long neck down, his muzzle within an inch of Rudo's throat.

"Don't touch him!" Zoe shouted. What had Croyd planned to do? Bite out Rudo's throat? Struggling in her sterile gown, never meant to fit over a heavy robe, she moved closer to the heap of dissolving flesh that had been Pan Rudo.

Rudo's eyes were vacant, distant. He smiled up at Croyd's mask.

"Where's the rest of the Trump?" Zoe yelled. "Where is it?"

He looked up at her masked face, through it, beyond it. "There's plenty. I lied to you, telling you there was only the pittance in the inhalers. The Black Trump is in the water truck. Enough to fill it."

He took in a shuddering breath and then his face went slack, his eyes staring, motionless, at some hell Zoe hoped she would never see.

"Bang," Croyd whispered "You're dead."

The wind shrieked and the walls of the tent billowed. Above it, the ugly joker's breath sounded labored, as if he wasn't getting enough air.

Croyd shook his long neck, and he made a frustrated whuffing sound.

The joker got to his feet. "Now that we've had our moment of silence," the joker said, "let's get our butts in gear. That bitch Harvest is probably halfway to Jerusalem by now." He tried to make a fist with his broken arm, and his twisted face distorted even more. He lowered the arm back down to his side, carefully. "Give us a ride, Croyd; we're outta here."

Croyd was already at the doorway, a pair of his legs drumming impatiently against the sand.

"The hell we are!" Zoe yelled. "You're both covered with virus, idiots! Nobody's going anywhere until you're scrubbed down, and I'm not even sure ..." The joker named Billy Ray was probably dead already. His voice sounded muffled, as if he had the beginnings of a cold.

"Yeah. Okay. We'll wash up first," Billy Ray said.

"There's some stuff in the lab tent," Zoe said. A shower head for chemical accidents, and chlorine bleach in quantity. She hoped there was a water reserve connected to the shower, that it wasn't just for show. "Follow me."

She ran out into the hell of blowing sand, Croyd and Billy Ray behind her. A guard loomed up in front of her, his rifle aimed at her belly, a startling apparition in the swirls of yellow dust. She threw herself flat on the sand. A muffled crack sounded behind her. The guard fell. Zoe scrambled to her feet. Billy Ray trotted past her and scooped up the guard's rifle. Zoe followed him, thinking, we'll have to wash the stock on the damned thing.

She opened the airlock. Croyd squeezed through it. She shooed him toward the shower head.

She handed Billy Ray a mask.

He took it with his good arm and put it on. "We're gonna wash him down?" he asked.

"Yeah. Him first, then you, then me." The idiot was holding the rifle with his broken arm. "Sheesh!" Zoe said "Don't you have any pain receptors at all?"

"I heal fast."

Zoe grabbed a gallon of chlorine bleach and a mop and handed them to the ugly joker. "For the camel. Start at his head and work back."

Bleach reacted with camel smell and released a truly remarkable stench, even filtered through Zoe's mask.

"That stings!" Croyd protested.

Zoe scrubbed at the inside of one of his eight legs. "Sorry," she said. "lift your foot. Not that one!"

"I've never smelled anything this bad in my life," Billy Ray said.

"Just a little harder, right there behind my fifth knee," Croyd said. "Ahhhh." He arched his hump like a satisfied cat.

"Shut up, camel." Billy Ray scrubbed harder.

"We've got to hurry," Zoe said. "Somebody's going to find that guard."

"How many guns in camp, Zoe?" Billy Ray asked.

"I don't know. I've never seen more than half a dozen guards at the perimeter. Sayyid would have kept close track on the guns, I guess."

"I'm going outside. If I see any guards, I'll take 'em out." Billy Ray picked up his newly washed rifle and left.

Zoe swabbed Croyd's short tail. "Can he do it?" she asked.

"He's good," Croyd said. He snaked his neck around and looked at her, "Can you wash this stuff off yet?"

"The shower is designed to clean up chemical spills," Zoe said. "If I pull the cnain, it's on until the tank is empty. We'll have to wait for this guy to get back."

"He's fast," Croyd said. He peered up at the shower head with longing.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Ray went outside the tent.

The wind howled, the sand blew like a scouring pad. Ray tore his clothes off and let the wind blow up him for half a minute until he felt clean. He knew that he wasn't, but at lease he felt clean.

He huddled down, turning his face away from the wind. This was the tricky part. His hands were clumsy. The one attached to his broken arm was entirely useless. He had to be careful now, damn careful.

The Black Trump was the only thing in his life that had ever scared Ray shitless, and he'd decided that if he was going to face it again he'd have some kind of protection. He'd mashed his nose flat, all the better to hide and hold nasal filters. He'd closed off most of his mouth for the same reason.

He'd known earlier that night he'd have to face the Trump again, so he'd put the biological filters in his nostrils and stuffed another in the corner of his mouth. He was so surprised and angered by Harvest's betrayal that he'd almost forgotten to use it, but instinct had taken over at the last second and his tongue had slipped it into place.

He extracted the filters and dropped them on the sand. He stood for a moment, naked in the clean desert wind. He needed clothes, a splint for his arm, and a way back to Jerusalem. First, though, he had to get sterile, if there was any bleach left over from washing the camel.

He went back into the tent and grinned at Zoe Harris. She was pretty good looking. "I'll wash your back," he said, "if you wash mine."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Camel Croyd, dripping with bleach, backed away from Billy Ray.

Billy Ray wasn't masked -

"Don't breathe!" Zoe yelled. Billy Ray nodded, reached up for the stack of masks by the door and put one one.

"What's next?" he asked.

"Shower," Zoe said. The Joker's broken arm hung limp by his side. "Wait! Let me splint that arm first!"

Billy Ray put the rifle on a lab counter and held out his wrist.

"Oh, damn," Zoe said. "My splint's ruined." Its metal braces were buried in Rudo's arm. She tore the velcro straps away from the soft splint, held it in front of her mask, breathed, and wrapped the splint on Billy's wrist.

"What good's that going to - uurgh!" Billy Ray said, as the splint went rigid on his arm. He grabbed the edge of the lab counter with both hands and looked a little pale.

"Thanks, lady," Billy Ray said. "Don't slow us down, Zoe. Where's the bleach?"

It was a pity his face was so ugly. The rest of him wasn't, Zoe observed, as she stripped out of her surgical gown, her gloves, and her sweaty cotton robes. Billy Racy swabbed bleach over her back. She returned the favor.

"You always wear water bottles?" Billy Ray asked.

"I thought I'd have to run for it," Zoe said.

"Keep them," Billy Ray said. "We haven't made it out of this damned desert yet."

Zoe reached up and yanked the shower chain, and the three of them spluttered in a deluge of clean, tepid water.

"Outside!" Zoe said. She grabbed her robe. "We get dressed outside!"

Starkers, they ran out into the storm. Sand drove against Zoe's wet hair and coated it in gritty mud.

"We've got to catch April," Billy Ray said.

"We have to make sure nobody leaves this camp," Zoe said.

"They can't walk out. Croyd can get us to April's truck, and then he can run to Jerusalem in no time flat." Billy Ray fastened his belt and picked up his guns.

"What is he, a supersonic camel?" Zoe asked.

"Yeah."

"The camels. The people here could leave on the camels."

"I can turn the critters loose," Croyd said. "They'll follow me."

Billy Ray and Croyd started around the back side of the tent, on their way to the camel herd. Zoe followed grabbing her pack out of the sand as they passed it.

"We'll be stopped!" She couldn't hide the quaver in her voice. "If that water truck makes it to Jerusalem before we do - "

Billy Ray untied the camels. They snorted at the sight of Croyd but they got to their feet in the sand and crowded around him.

"That's all of them," Billy Ray said. "Sit down, Croyd, and we'll climb on." Zoe climbed on Croyd's hump and grabbed a double handful of muddy camel hair. Billy Ray clambered on behind her. "Giddyap," he said.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Canton airport lay on the city's outskirts, on land built up from the rich, moist soil of the great Xijiang delta. Flying low above the paddies Radical saw a modern-looking multiple lane road leading to a terminal building and hangars. Held down by guy lines out in the middle of the runway, looking like the Macy's float for the song "Och, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye," lay the airship Harmony.

The runway looked deserted in the slanting yellow sunset light. No baggage and fuel carts roaming around, nobody standing by the blimp. There was an Airbus parked off on the right wing of the terminal, with a skyway ramp hooked up to it, but he couldn't see any activity around it. That might mean much or little; in the distance Canton looked like a pretty big city, and he would have expected more traffic.

"Well," he said into the heavy humid breeze of his passage, "let's try the direct approach." As peasants shin-deep in reeking water raised up their conical hats and pointed, he flew toward the terminal building. He was relishing the sense of liberation after so many years, and he wasn't as alert as he could have been despite the situation. He saw flashes like pale highway flares from several points on the roof, then heard nasty sharp cracks in the air nearby.

Somebody was shooting at him. He heard the full-auto reports as he swooped toward the front of the two-story terminal. He frowned. He was guilty of poor discipline; he had known he was flying into danger. He had let himself get carried away ...

The front of the terminal was glass. Or had been. Most of it lay in glittering shard snow on the sidewalk and street. He heard more gunshots as he touched down lightly on the sidewalk, saw muzzle flashes in the gloom.

Small arms fire didn't concern him too much. Bullets hurt like hell, and bruised, and if people concentrated enough fire on him he would certainly go down from the sheer battering. But he was Radical, and he was free. Standing upright he walked through the vacant windows into the building.

Cold air hit him like a bucket of water. The air-conditioning was still blowing, keeping the muggy air at bay. In front of him rose an escalator. To the left were ticket counters; to the right a couple of baggage carousels. It looked surprisingly like an airport back in the States.

Except of course, for the party of raggedy-ass South China Sea piratical types who were blazing away from the ticketing area at guys in khaki uniforms with red stars on their caps hunkered down beside the carousels. More guys with guns crouched at the top of the escalator, but Radical didn't get a great look at them.

The pirates and the locals didn't notice the newcomer. There's something about somebody firing an automatic weapon at you from sixty feet away that tends to concentrate your attention. Radical slipped off his peace medallion, began to swing it in circles on its chain.

Gunfire erupted from the top of the escalator. Whoever was up there had been engrossed watching the shootout on the lower floor, but now Radical's arrival had been noticed. More bullets shattered the air by his head. He smiled. By this time his medallion was a spinning blur.

He let it go. The heavy peace symbol flashed through the air and split the skull of a Chinese gunman. He dropped, anointing his comrades with his blood and brains.

The others turned around and cut loose on Radical with everything they had. Their bullets passed through the smiling blond apparition. So did the bullets from the men on the second floor.

A few serene paces and Radical was in among the uniformed troops. He held out his hand. His medallion leapt from the floor by the wall and flew into it.

He grinned more widely at the astonished troops. "Okay, boys," he told them, "time to show you what a real communist party is all about."

He began to whirl the medallion around his head. Steel gun barrels sparked and parted when it struck them. Heads and limbs didn't spark, but parted just the same.

The official Chinese party line opposed belief in the supernatural. That worked as well as anti-supersititon campaigns had everywhere else. Which is to say, the loyal soldiers of the People's Liberation Army knew there were no such things as evil spirits. Except, of course, when one appeared in their midst.

They ran.

Radical swung his medallion a couple times more to clear various clinging bits of stuff from it. Then he swayed and sat down on the lip of the carousel. Going insubstantial had really drained him. It surprised him. He knew that he partook of the powers of Mark's other alter egos but, unlike them, he didn't have substantial memories of an earlier life. The world had started for him in that battle at People's Park, and all the time intervening had been spent in a state below semiconsciousness, trapped in the depths of Mark's psyche.

A bandy-legged little bearded guy with a red rag tied around his head and a patch over one eye came up. "You one of Belew's boys?" Radical asked him.

"Bell You," he agreed happily, touching his chest. "Lu."

"Lu," Radical repeated. "We need to get up that escalator pronto."

Lu's one eye moved nervously. "No can. Too many on top, too many guns. We try, all die. You lose."

"You have a way with words, Lu," Radical said, smiling. He stood up. He felt better already, and losing was the furthest thing from his mind. "The solution is simple."

"What that?" Lu asked, squinting suspiciously.

"Follow me." He turned and strode for the escalator.

The men up there reacted quickly, loosing gales of small-arms fire. A pair of bullets struck him in the chest, but they were nine-millimeter rounds from an Uzi, with nowhere near the punch even of the short 7.62 bullets the Kalashnikovs fired. They stung, and rocked him back, but they didn't hurt him.

He laughed and answered fire with fire - JJ Flash's plasma flame. A gunman standing square at the escalator's top caught the brunt of the blast and fell in flames, but he was well dead before his central nervous system could register pain. Two others crouching behind the housings where the flexible handrail fed back down into the mechanism weren't so lucky, and caught air superheated by the plasma jet. One came hurtling downward past Radical to find the hard ground floor for anesthetic. The other tottered back, shrieking and waving his arms in his terrified comrades' faces like a flame-feathered bird. It was rough, but Radical wanted it to be. The fear of burning is fundamental to the human organism. It would make the others quail, or at least stand back - he sent another blast, a generalized dragon-belch without specific target, ahead to keep the way clear.

He gathered his legs - twice as powerful as a nat's - beneath him and sprang. He landed at the top, legs spread, grinning hugely. He held up a flame-wreathed fist in a revolutionary salute. "All right, you imperialist lackeys," he declared. "Who wants some?"

All of them, apparently. There were at least twenty armed Occidentals on the second floor, leavened with a few PLA security troops. Every one of them leveled his weapon at the apparition and held down the trigger.

At least a score of bullets struck the center of Radical's glorious bare chest at once. The impact knocked his glorious ass right back down the unmoving escalator steps.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Sascha Starfin sneezed, spraying snot all over the interior of the rattling flatbed truck.

"Real good," Jay told him. "I feel a lot safer now."

Behind the wheel, J. Bob Belew gave off a sand-in-the-gearbox chuckle. They were riding in a rickety, farting stakebed truck liberated from the underground facility, down a road whose pavement seemed to crumble away beneath their tires. Ahead, the airport appeared across flooded rice paddies, where straw-hatted peasants worked to the timeless rhythms of Chinese show tunes playing from tinny sixties-vintage Japanese transistor radios.

Jay was mashed in the cab between Sascha and J. Bob. He jumped every time Belew reached to work the floor-mounted stick-shift, which was jutting up between the detective's knees.

"Are we there yet?" Sascha asked, his voice thick and congested. If he'd had eyes, they would have been running.

"The terminal is the building that looks like a baleen whale smiling at us," Belew said. "And there's the good ship Harmony beyond it." A white roundness swelled like a tumor from behind the terminal. "They're due to take off for Hong Kong at sunset."

"How fast is that damn thing?" Jay asked.

"She's good for upwards of sixty knots," J. Bob said, "but it'll take her a while to get up to speed, largely due to air resistance. Be a long trip there - hour and a half, maybe - but once they're on the scene you couldn't ask for a better vehicle to disperse the virus."

A face appeared at Belew's window. It was a handsome, round Asian face with deep soulful eyes.

Jesus!" Jay sputtered. "Can't you pick a face and stick with it? Who the hell are you now?"

"Chow Yun Fat," the face said. "The Cary Grant of the Orient. He stars in all those John Woo action flicks."

"Real good," Jay said. "Maybe the Card Sharks will all want your autograph."

"Chow Yun Fat is like a god in Asia, They'll never shoot at him." Chow Yun Fat showed them a suave smile.

"What's that sound?" Sascha asked.

As if for emphasis the truck backfired juicily. "It's our wonderful conveyance," Jay said. "The Chinese have figured out how to make the damn things run on pinto beans."

"No, not that," the joker said snuffling. "That."

Jay listened. He heard it too. "Either Casaday is making up a bunch of popcorn, or Radical started the party without us."

The terminal," Belew said. A quarter-mile ahead they could see the tall windows lit in pulses from within, as if pranksters were flicking lights on and off at random. "That's a firefight in progress," the mercenary said. "Looks as if Dr. Finn and Tung's men are having a difference of opinion with the local security forces."

Jay moaned and sank down in his seat. "Whose bright idea was it to send Bradley to the airport?"

"We're all at risk, Mr. Ackroyd," Belew said. "A bullet in the head may be a kinder fate than the Black Trump."

"A Bullet in the Head!" Chow Fat Jerry exclaimed. "That's one of the movies Chow Yun Fat made with John Woo."

"I wouldn't know," Jay said gloomily.

"Hang on," Belew warned them. He spun the wheel hard right and mashed the accelerator down. The truck departed the road, rolled across a shallow ditch with engine grinding and groaning protest. It struck the steel-mesh security fence and plowed through with a scream of anguished metal. Broken wire ends scraped along the doors like fingernails on a blackboard.

"Are you out of your fucking mind, Belew?" Jay screamed, as the truck bounded onto cement apron, in among hangars.

J. Bob was grinning beneath his mustache as if this were the greatest game of all time. "If you don't like action movies," J. Bob said serenely, "you're really going to hate this."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Radical lay for a moment at the foot of the steps. From above came a shrill rebel yell of triumph.

Lu's face floated upside down above his. "Not dead?" the man said, wonder in his voice. He poked a thin brown finger at Radical's wounds, touching them to make sure they were real.

Radical glanced down at himself. His chest glowed with a lot of little pink circles, as if someone had been beating on him with a ball peen hammer. He was going to do serious bruising. "I'm fine," he said, managing not to croak it - although it felt as if somebody had been trying to resculpt his ribs with a cold chisel. He snapped himself up onto his feet like a gymnast. And he laugned. Despite the pain, despite the danger, he felt great. He was free, after so many years chafing in captivity.

Enjoy it while it lasts, came a voice from deep inside his skull.

For an instant he frowned. It felt disorienting to have the thoughts of such a dangerous reactionary rattling around in his own skull. Like having a traitor within.

I don't plan on going back to being that poor bourgeois fool Meadows in an hour, he thought haughtily.

None of us does, Harpo, JJ thought back. None of us does.

He shook the doubts off like drops of water in his wavy surfer-dude hair. He wondered what time it was. Then he decided he had no time to wonder.

"Let's try that again," Radical said. He flew up the steps - literally, a handspan above the rubber handrails. A pair of gunmen had crept up to the head of the escalator. Each was trying to outwait the other, fearful of getting a faceful of flame. When they caught sight of Radical shooting up at them they started to rise, trying to bring MP5 machine pistols to bear. Radical spread his arms, swept both of them up, and bore them right into the faces of their comrades.

Goons went everywhere. Radical got his feet beneath him, planted far apart, and began to swing his peace symbol above his head. Then he just waded into his opponents, giving them no clearance to use their firepower.

"All I'm saying, guys," he said in a ringing, sarcastic voice, "is give peace a chance." The golden medallion hummed round and round, splitting limbs and heads like a circular saw, surrounding the ace with a wave of blood like the splash from a boulder falling into a lake. Some brave soul grabbed his left wrist - then shrieked soprano as flame flared up Radical's arm.

Radical grinned at the man as he staggered back, staring at the chaired nub his hand had become. "What's the matter, comrade? Too hot for you?"

A Chinese soldier popped up to his left, shouldering a Type 56. Radical phased out as the soldier fired an ear-roasting burst. Goons screamed and fell as the bullets scythed through them.

The man lowered his weapon, gaping. Radical phased back in, swayed slightly - shit, that takes it out of me! - and turned the weapon to a yellow-glowing ingot in the man's hands.

He turned around, grinning into the faces of his terrified antagonists. "I'd love to stay and rap," he said, "but I've got a blimp waiting. Peace."

He turned. Flame flashed from his hands. The high windows looking out on the runway shimmered like mirages and vanished, puffing into incandescent gas.

Radical flew out where the windows had been, soaring up to let the rays of the setting sun, angling up over the terminal building, strike him fully. Energy filled him - energy, confidence, purpose. He felt the sun's heat inside him. Nova heat.

Nothing could stop him now.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Belew brought the flatbed screeching around a corner. Automatic weapons fire chased them across the field. Lord Tung's boys were returning fire from the back of the truck. Jay half turned in his seat and saw one of their men take a hit and tumble off the back, but Belew only accelerated, swerving.

In the shadow of the terminal building, J. Bob slammed on the brakes hard. The flatbed skewed around and came to a screaming halt beside a ring of baggage trailers that had been driven together to form a makeshift breastwork. Behind the piles or tourist luggage stood a ragged handful of Belew's South China Sea pirates, and Bradley Finn, MD.

Tung's boys were leaping off the truck even before they were stopped, scrambling for shelter behind the wall of Samsonite. Chow Yun Jerry sauntered after them. Belew moved around the truck, snapping orders in Cantonese. Jay tumbled out and helped Sascha down from the cab. "This way," he said, taking the blind joker by the arm. As they ran for the luggage a burst of automatic gunfire punched into the planks surrounding the truck bed.

Finn and the pirates laid down covering fire until they were safe behind the suitcases. "You all right, doc?" Jay asked him.

"No thanks to you guys," the centaur said. He had his hair tied back with a red bandana, and he was wearing his flak jacket and his Kevlar horse blanket. The bandana was soaked with sweat; he looked like Rambo with a tail and dyed green hair. "You took your own sweet time getting here. When Casaday showed up with the Black Trump, we figured you were all dead." He squinted at Jay. "Your face looks even worse than before."

"You should see the other guy," Jay said.

The airship Harmony was grounded about fifty meters from the terminal, held down against a slight eastern breeze by cables tied to trucks. There were figures crouched behind the trucks, and more lying outside the terminal with rifles pointed at their luggage. Desultory fire punched holes in Guccis, American Touristers, and cardboard valises alike.

"I can't tell our guys from their guys," Jay said.

"The ones shooting at us are their guys," Belew said. "It appears we have more than the Sharks to deal with." He gestured across the tarmac toward some little brown men in uniforms with red stars on their hats.

"Tell me about it," Finn said. "We were doing okay when it was just Sharks, but then those guys showed up and started shooting at us too."

"People's Liberation Army," Belew informed them. "Security. No such thing as a purely civilian airfield in the People's Republic. There's probably a few truckloads of militia headed this way to back them up."

"Swell," said Jay. "I was just thinking how this was much too easy, might as well make it interesting."

Chow Yun Jerry joined them. "Where's Casaday?"

"In the terminal, with the Black Trump and about a hundred hostages," Finn told them.

"Hostages?" asked Jerry. "What hostages?"

"The paying customers waiting for their blimp ride."

"Chinese standoff," Belew said, stroking his mustache.

Jerry flashed them a boyish grin. "Wrong director," he said. "That's John Carpenter." He stood upright behind a particularly large mound of baggage, hands on hips, looking cool. Even Lord Tung's pirates were shooting him admiring glances and muttering among themselves.

From the terminal came an angry crackle of gunfire. "We need to secure the blimp before Casaday can load the virus," Belew said.

"Great plan, J. Bob," Jay said. He was hunkered down, trying to peer through cracks between suitcases. "Tell it to the guys hiding behind those trucks, see what they think."

"Let me handle them," announced Chow Yun Jerry. He stood upright, straightened his clothes, and strode around the end of the barricade onto the open field.

"Get back here!" Jay screamed at him.

Jerry held up a hand, waved, smiled, strolled casually towara the blimp. The incoming fire ceased. "Chow Yun Fat!" the defenders exclaimed in unison.

Then they all raised their rifles and cut loose for all they were worth.

Jerry dropped as if he'd been shot. Jay thought he had, until he came shinnying like a monkey up the front of the baggage-barricade and tumbled over with bullets snapping past his ears. The elbows of his shirt were blown out from his high-speed belly-crawl.

"Of course," Belew said conversationally, "John Woo is the most outspokenly anti-Communist filmmaker in Asia, and the local boys may have figured they could reap some Brownie points by dusting off his pet star, cultural icon or no."

"Shut the fuck up," said Jerry, batting away Sascha's hands, which were feeling for bullet holes.

"You got to start watching a better class of movies," Jay told his junior partner. A man who looked suspiciously like a Card Shark made a dash for the blimp. Jay popped him off a split second before several bullets whined off the empty tarmac where he had been. No one was safe out there.

"Uh-oh," Belew said.

"Uh-oh?" Jay repeated. "Who the fuck said that? Confucius? Pericles? Harpo Marx? What, uh-oh?"

Belew nodded toward the terminal. A wave of tourists in T-shirts and Mao suits and sundresses were being herded from one of the gates out across the field. Jay could hear a woman crying, even at this distance. The tourists edged out onto the tarmac slowly, frightened and unwilling but there were Shark gunmen among them, giving them no choice. "Uh-oh," said Jay.

One of Tung's men raised his rifle. Finn grabbed his arm and wrenched it down. "No shooting! Those are civilians, damn it!" The man stared at him blankly until J. Bob roared at them in Cantonese.

The passengers were heading for the blimp's boarding ramp, decked with red and yellow ribbons. In the midst of all that frightened humanity Jay glimpsed the pumpkin head of O. K. Casaday, bobbing along surrounded by hostages. Then it was gone again.

"They're rolling the canisters to the blimp," Sascha called. "I can see it in their minds. They've got them on dollies."

"Casaday, you evil motherfucker," J. Bob said. Jay looked at him; Belew said motherfucker about as often as Mother Teresa did.

Casaday had a wall of sweating hostages pressed all around him and his cannisters. No way for Belew or Tung's pirates to fire without mowing down the innocents.

Belew studied the moving clot of humanity, weighing them with his eyes, his face emotionless. He dropped the banana magazine from his gun, slammed home a fresh one, and barked out a rapid series of commands in Cantonese. Lord Tung's boys and the South China pirates swung their weapons on the shuffling throng, and Sascha moaned, clutching Belew by the arm. "You can't. There are women and kids."

Jay whirled to face Belew. "You son of a bitch."

Belew's voice was almost sad. "A hundred innocent lives against a world. We have no choice, Jay."

"No! Tell them to hold their fire," Jay said. "Let me pop the hostages away first ..."

"There are too many of them," Belew said. "There's no time."

There was a roar of flame behind them, as the terminal windows blew out in a huge gout of white fire and shattered glass. Jay whirled. One of the pirates began to shout in fear. Out on the field, the crowd of hostages shattered into a hundred terrified individuals. Some of them dropped to the tarmac, hands over their heads; others screamed and broke for safety. Jay saw a Shark swing his gun toward a running woman with a child in her arms. His finger was faster. The Shark was gone before he could squeeze the trigger, off to a nice little cave in Burma.

A human figure rose up out of of the fireball, bare-chested, golden, alive with light. His long hair whipped behind him like a banner as he streaked across the sky.

Suddenly no one was shooting at them any more. All the guns were pointing upwards, pouring lead into the sky.

"Is he ours?" Finn asked Jay. "Who is he?"

"The Radical," Jay told him.

Finn gave him a baffled look. "What's a Radical?"

Belew stroked his mustache. "All is ephemeral - fame and the famous as well. Marcus Aurelius. People's Park, Dr. Finn. 1970."

The centaur shrugged. "Before my time."

"It's Mark Meadows," Jay said. "Leastwise he used to be Mark Meadows. Now ..." He flew like Starshine, Jay realized. Starshine who had died in the night of space, back on Takis. He drank the sun's power like Starshine too, and beams of light played from his fingers. He was as quick as Moonchild, with Starshine's light powers and the fire of Jumpin' Jack Flash, and back at the lab he'd gone insubstantial, one of Cosmic Traveler's tricks. He was all of Mark's friends rolled into one. For some reason, that thought chilled Jay to the bone.

"Forget the soldiers," J. Bob Belew muttered under his breath. "Disable the blimp."

Radical held his hands out before him. Sunbeams lanced from them, blinding-bright. Jay had to shield his eyes. Away across the field a fuel truck exploded into a pool of red and yellow flame and black smoke. "The blimp," J. Bob repeated, with iron in his voice.

Up on the terminal roof, a Chinese soldier tracked the flying man with his machine gun. Bullets zipped around him. Radical banked and swooped. The sunbeam flared again. The prone soldier became a spark and vanished in a wisp of greasy smoke.

"Jesus," Jay said.

Other defenders blazed merrily away, but Radical was too quick for them. He streaked away to the east, curved around, and came whipping back low. Sunbeams flared from either hand. Men blazed up and died before they could scream.

Jay turned to Sascha, feeling ill. "You're lucky you can't see this," he told the eyeless joker.

"I hear them screaming in my head," Sascha replied grimly.

Across the field, a Chinese soldier tossed away his gun and tried to run. Light stabbed down from above, and he flared up like a moth caught in a torch-flame and vanished.

Chow Yun Jerry shuddered. "I'm glad he's on our side."

"Are you?" Jay said flatly. He wasn't so sure.

"The blimp, you stupid motherfucker!" Belew swore.

Twice in one day, Jay thought; now Mother Theresa would never catch up. Suddenly Jay had a clear view of a young white guy in a flapping lab coat, pushing a dolly ahead of him as he raced toward the airship. There were two canisters on the dolly, and Jay had a clear shot. He pointed ... and froze.

One of the four canisters was the Overtrump. If he popped that one away ... But even as he weighed his choices, he lost sight of the dolly behind a dozen hostages running for freedom.

"Fuck," Jay snarled. He'd blown it.

It was all up to the Radical now.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Radical laughed, flew forward. The sunbeams stabbed out from him in all directions, and at each touch of radiance someone puffed into vapor and died. Casaday and company were running now, the guards urging the hostages to follow with bursts of gunfire at their feet, and into the bodies of stragglers.

"Be my guest," Radical said. "I can fly faster than you can run."

He was almost over their heads when he saw white smoke blossom from the distance, way off to his left. Shoulder-fired missile, he knew; Mark had seen enough of them going off, waging counterrevolution in Vietnam.

He loosed a beam from his left hand, swept it left to right. He was rewarded by the flash of an explosion; evidently the rocketeer had been carrying some reloads.

And then, somehow, he saw the missile. A dot of blackness against the graying sky. A dot that grew larger rapidly without showing any apparent motion.

Which meant it was headed straight for him.

Radical aimed both hands at the approaching projectile. As he willed forth a sunbeam, he also willed himself insubstantial, just in case.

Neither thing happened. Flying, flashing, and phasing out was just too much for the system. Instead of becoming invincible, and blasting the rocket out of existence, Radical began to fall.

The rocket was based on the Soviet RPG-7V, an antitank weapon whose straightened-sperm shape was almost as famous to millions of CNN viewers as the AK-47. In this case its warhead was a high-explosive charge, meant to attack people, which meant its blast was less focused but wider spread. Radical had been almost exactly 700 meters distant when the rocket was launched. That meant it hummed through the space he'd occupied - and an internal fuse burned down, detonating the warhead not ten feet way from him.

Radical saw a flash. Then black.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Jay watched helplessly from behind the luggage as Radical plummeted seventy feet to the tarmac. Jerry moaned. Sascha pressed hands over ears as if that would block out their pain.

The golden youth hit with a loud wet smack, the sound a butcher would make slapping a piece of meat down on a tabletop. J. Bob Belew squeezed his eyes briefly shut. "How dieth the wise man?" he quoted. "As the fool. Ave atque vale, Mark."

The dollies were just disappearing into the Harmony's sleek carbon-fiber gondola, Jay saw the man in the lab coat, boyish and plump, standing at the top of the ramp as the gunmen herded the last ot the passengers to either side of him. He looked over the field through horn-rimmed glasses. "Put down your guns," he shouted out, "you can't stop us now! You've lost!"

With a loud clack J. Bob switched his rifle to single-shot. He brought the weapon to his shoulder, aimed, fired in one smooth motion. At the same instant a matronly Chinese woman in high heels turned an ankle on the gangplank and jostled the man in the lab coat. He turned his head a few degrees.

The bullet struck his right cheekbone and blew it out the side of his face in a spray of blood and white fragments. He windmilled his arms and fell, and was instantly dragged aboard by goons while others knelt to rake the luggage barricade with fire. Jay and the others hunkered down as suitcases and knapsacks thudded to the impact of hit after hit. A hardshell gray Samsonite took a round and exploded, showering them with T-shirts and underwear. J. Bob shook his head. "Some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed."

This wasn't going real well, Jay decided; worse, the fucking Sharks had other vials of Black Trump. "Sascha, I'm sending you back to New York. Jokertown. Sneeze on people, it may be our last chance." Sascha didn't have time to argue. You could scarcely hear the pop over the gunfire.

"They're casting off," Finn said in disgust. He prodded Jay on the shoulder with the barrel of a gun. He had a machine pistol in one hand and an automatic in the other. "Tell Clara I love her. Tell her I'm doing this for her."

"Doing what?" Jay said suspiciously. "I don't want you doing anything, just stay - "

Finn darted around the blunt nose of a baggage cart and took off for the blimp at a gallop, firing with both hands as he ran, his shots ringing out wildly in all directions.

"Finn, damn it, no, you moron," Jay swore, racing after him. Lead fingers reached out to touch them from everywhere: from the terminal, from the hangars beyond, from the trucks where crewmen were scurrying to cast off the guy lines. Jay yelped, reversed direction, and dove back toward cover.

Finn galloped straight ahead, bullets kicking up around his hooves, running like Secretariat on a good day. Two Shark goons knelt on the ramp, blazing away at the approaching centaur. A shot slammed into his withers. The Kevlar stopped the round, but Finn staggered under the impact. A second shot knocked him down.

"Cover him!" Belew shouted, and repeated it in Cantonese. Tung's boys began to blast away. Jerry joined in. Jay popped off one of the goons on the ramp. The other wasn't so lucky. He did a crazy dance as the stream of bullets hammered him sideways and went tumbling to the ground.

Belew barked a command and three of his South China pirates went tearing after Finn, screaming like banshees and firing on the run. Behind the trucks, automatic weapons began to chatter. The pirates flopped like rag dolls, one two three, the last man cut almost in half by Shark fire. Not one of them got ten yards.

Every time one of the bad guys raised his head, Jay popped him off to that swell cave in the mountains of Burma. Problem was, most of them were keeping their heads down. The damned trucks made a much better barricade than a bunch of baggage.

"I wonder," Jay muttered, suddenly thoughtful. He'd never tried anything anywhere near that big before, but ... "Might as well, can't dance." He took a deep breath and pointed, his right hand a gun, his left tight around his right wrist to steady his aim. He dropped a thumb.

The nearest truck vanished with a clap of inrushing air that was audible clear across the field.

Several Shark gunmen vanished with it. The rest found themselves standing out on the tarmac in plain view with rather dumbfounded looks on their faces. They weren't standing long; Belew was just as surprised as they were, but a lot faster on the uptake. Tung's boys and the pirates cut loose a few seconds behind J. Bob, and by then Jay had popped off the other cable trucks, one after the other. His head was throbbing so hard he could scarcely see.

Finn was back on his feet and running again. "He'll never make it," Jerry said. The airship's engines whined up through the sound spectrum as power was applied. Hydraulics began to fold the ramp up toward the blimp's smooth, white belly. Jay steadied himself with a hand on Belew's shoulder. "Don't you have an aphorism handy?"

"Come on, Dover," Belew roared, "move your bloomin arse!"

The ramp was off the ground, halfway retracted. Without breaking stride Finn jumped. He landed on the ramp, began to slide back. He scrabbled his hooves wildly and futilely for purchase, dropped one of his guns, began to slide back.

And the ramp hoisted him up into the gondola.

The airship Harmony lifted into the sky, blocking out the sunset as it rose.

The airfield grew strangely quiet. The only sound was the whine of the Harmony's engines. The supporting cast, native and import, had either turned to puffs of incandescent gas and floated away on the breeze, or were lying dead on the tarmac. For almost a minute, no one was shooting at anyone.

Belew had his big, blocky handgun out, working the slide to check the load. He stuffed it back in its holster at the small of his back, sang out orders to Tung's pirates, who passed him a handful of magazines for the Chinese assault rifles.

"I'm going to secure that helicopter and go after them," he said, stuffing the spare magazines into his pocket. "If I don't make it, you know what to do, Jay - and may God go with you." He squeezed Jay's shoulder and scuttled out from behind the luggage-cart barricade. Four of Tung's boys went sprinting after him.

"Helicopter? What helicopter?" Jay shouted after him. The only aircraft on the field was the Airbus parked at a terminal gate.

"There it is," Jerry told him. "It was behind the blimp."

Jay looked at where he was pointing. Sure enough, a little bubblefront chopper sat with rotors spinning at the edge of the field. It was almost lost in the huge shadow of the blimp. "Fuck the helicopter," Jay said. He had a better idea. A brilliant idea. His success with the trucks had left him feeling weak as a kitten, but wildly confident. He shaped his hand into a gun and pointed up, at the huge white bulk of the Harmony, outlined against the setting sun. He'd send the fucking thing to the south pole on Takis, he decided. He dropped his thumb.

Nothing happened.

His finger had never jammed before. He tried it again. Again. The airship began to move away, untouched and serene. "Okay," he said, "so I don't do blimps."

J. Bob Belew was racing across the field, Tung's boys a few steps behind him. They were halfway to the chopper when a flickering fire bloomed within a dark hangar. Jay could see J. Bob's body jerk as the machine-gun burst hit him. The stream of bullets swept back and forth, mowing down the pirates.

Jay caught a quick glimpse of a rumpled white suit and an oversized balding head. Casaday. The fucker hadn't gone with the blimp. Before he could react, Casaday shot him a finger and ducked back around the corner of the hangar. He was carrying some kind of machine gun with a big drum magazine. Jay found himself loathing guns more and more with every passing moment.