Iceberg

Chapter 19

Because of the seven-hour time gain in flying from east to west and the twelve-hundred-mile-per-hour-plus speed of the jet bomber, it was still on the morning of the same day he left Iceland when a bleary-eyed Pitt yawned, stretched in the confined limitations of the tiny cabin, and looking idly out the navigator's side window, watched the tiny shadow of the aircraft dart across the green slopes of the Sierra Madre mountains.

And what now? Pitt smiled wryly back at his reflection in the (tiass as the bomber now swung out of the foothills and across the smog-blanketed San Gabriel Valley. Gazing down at the Pacific Ocean as it came into view, he cleared his mind of the past and directed it on the immediate future. He didn't know how nor did he have even a remote scrap for a plan, but he knew, no matter the obstacles, he knew he was going to kill Oskar Rondheim.

His mind abruptly returned to the present as the landing gear thumped down and locked into place at the same moment that Dean Kippmann nudged him on the arm.

"Have a nice nap?"

"Slept like the dead."

The B-92 touched down and the engines screamed as the pilot threw the thrust into reverse. The day outside looked warm and comfortable and the California sun gleamed blindingly on the long rows of military jets parked along the taxiways. Pitt read the twelve-foot-high letters painted across a giant hangar: WELCOME TO EL TORO MARINE AIR STATION.

The bomber's engines slowly died and an automobile sped over the apron as Pitt, Kippmann and the Air Force crew climbed down a narrow ladder to the concrete. Two men unreeled from a blue Ford stationwagon and approached Kippmann. Greetings and handshakes were exchanged. 'Then they all walked back to the car. Pitt, left standing with nothing to do, followed them.

Beside an open car door the three men huddled together and conversed in undertones while Pitt stood several feet away and enjoyed a cigarette. Finally Kippmann turned and came over.

"It seems we're about to crash a family reunion."

"Meaning?

"They're all here. Kelly, Marks, Rondheim, the whole lot."

"Here in California?" Pitt asked incredulously.

"Yes, we had them traced as soon as they left Iceland. The serial number you found on that black —,jet came home a winner. Hermit Limited purchased six of the same model with consecutive numbers from the factory. We have every one of the remaining five planes under surveillance at this moment."

"I'm impressed. That was fast work."

Kippmann dropped a smile. "Not all that tough. it might have been if the planes had been scattered around the globe, but as it is, they're all sitting neatly side by side exactly eight miles from here at the Orange County Airport."

"Then Kelly's headquarters must be nearby."

"In the hills behind Laguna Beach, a fifty-acre complex," Kippmann said, pointing in a southwesterly direction. "Incidentally, Hermit Limited has over three hundred employees on the payroll who they're doir, classified political anaivsis for their own government."

"Where do we go from here?"

Kippmann motioned Pitt into the car. "Disney land," he said solemnly, "to stop a double murder."

They pulled onto the Santa Ana Freeway and headed north, weaving in and out of the light morning traffic. As they passed the Newport Beach tumor, Pitt couldn't help wondering if the beautiful redhead he had met on the beach just a few days ago would still be there waiting at the New ' Porter Inn.

Kippmann produced two photographs and shoved them in front of Pitt. "Here are the men we're trying to save."

Pitt tapped the face in one of the photos. "This is Pablo Castile, President of the Dominican Republic."

Kippmann nodded. "A brilliant economist and one of the leading members of the Latin American right Since his inauguration he has begun an ambitious program of reforms. For the first time the people of his country are projecting an atmosphere of confidence and optimism. Our state department would hate like hell to see Kelly screw things ut) just when there's hope of the Dominican Republic becoming economically stable."

Pitt held up the other photo. "I can't place him."

Juan De Croix," Kippmann said. "A highly successful doctor of East Indian ancestry. Leader of the People's Progressive Party-won the election only six months ago, Now President of French Guiana."

"If I remember my current events, he's got problems."

"He's got problems, all right," Kippmann agreed.

"French Guiana is less prosperous than the British or Dutch Guianas. A movement for independence developed five years ago, but it was only under the threat of a revolution that the French permitted a new constitution and a general election. De Croix, of course, walked off with the votes and oroclaimed total independence.

He's got an uphill battle. His country suffers from tropical diseases of every type and from chronic shortages of domestic food. I don't envy him; no one does."

"De Croix's government is vulnerable," — aid Pitt thoughtfully. "But what of Catde's cabinet, aren't his ministers strong enough to survive his death?"

"With the people, maybe. But the Dominican army isn't too faithful. A military junta would no doubt take over, except in this case Kelly has obviously bought off the generals."

"How is it both of these men are at the same place at the same time?"

"If you'd read the papers, you'd know the leaders of the Western Hemisphere have just finished a conference in San Francisco for the Alliance of Economic and Agricultural Progress. De Croix, Castile and several other Latin leaders are doing a little sightseeing on the way home. it's that simple."

Why didn't you stop them from entering the park?

"I tried, but by the time our internal security forces could act, it was too late. De Croix and Castile have already been in the park for two hours and both refuse to leave. We can only keep our fingers crossed that Rondheim's killers stick to their time schedule."

"Cutting it a bit fine, aren't you?" Pitt said slowly.

Kippmann shrugged indifferently. "Some things YOU can Control, others you can only stand by and watch."

The car turned off the freeway onto Harbor Boulevard and soon pulled up to the employees' gate, and while the driver showed his credentials and asked directions from the guard, Pitt leaned out the window and watched the monorail train pass overhead. they were at the north end of the park and all he could see over the landscaped mounds that surrounded the buildings was the top half of the Matterhorn and the turrets on the Fantasyland castle. The gate was pushed open and they were passed in.

By the time Pitt walked down the underground hallway to the park security offices, he was beginning to think how good that hospital bed in Reykjavik had felt and wondered how soon he could fall into a replacement. He wasn't sure what he expected to find in the park security offices but he had hardly envisioned what he stepped into.

The main conference room was huge; it looked like a scaled-down version of the war room at the Pentagon. The main table ran for at least fifty feet and was circled by over twenty people. There was a radio in one corner and the operator was busily pointing out locations to a marker who stood on a ramp beneath a map that must have stretched ten feet high and covered half the facing wall. Pitt walked slowly around the table and stood under the beautifully contoured and painted map of Disneyland. He was studying the many colored lights and the trail of blue fluorescent tape the marker was laying throulh the park traffic areas when Kippmann tapped him on the shoulder.

"Ready to go to work?"

"My body is still running on Iceland time. It's past five o'clock there. I could stand a little bracer."

"I'm sorry, sir." The words came from a big man, a tall pipe-smoking man whose eyes stared out at Pitt from behind fashionable rimless glasses. "Alcohol has never been permitted in any area of the park since we opened. And we intend to keep it that way."

"Sorry about that," Pitt said good-naturedly. He looked at Kippmann expectantly.

Kippmann took the cue. "Major Dirk Pitt, allow me to introduce Mr. Dan Lazard, Chief of Park security."

Lazard's grip was firm. "Mr. Kippmann has filled me in concerning your injuries. Do you think you're up to this?"

"I can handle it," Pitt said somberly. "But we'll have to do something about my bandaged profile-it's a bit conspicuous." Lazard's eyes.

A glint of amusement came into Lazard's eye.

"Think we can fix it so no one will notice your bandages-not even the nurse who taped them."

Later Pitt stoed in front of the full-length mirror and struck a menacing pose. He was torn between uttering laughter or a stream of four-lettered words from embarrassment as he stared at the life-sized figure of the Big Bad Wolf, who politely stared back at him.

"You've got to admit," Kippmann said, fighting back a chuckle, "your own mother wouldn't recognize you in that rig."

"I suppose it is in keeping with my character," Pitt said. He removed the wolf's head, sat down in a chair and sighed. "How much time have we left?"

"Another hour and forty minutes to go before Kelly's deadline."

"Don't you think I should be sent in the game now? You're not leaving me much time to spot the killers… if I can spot them."

"Between my men, the park security staff and agents from the F.B.I there must be close to forty people concentrating every effort on stopping the assassination. I'm saving you for when we Come down to the wire."

"Scraping the bottom of the barrel for a last-ditch attempt." Pitt leaned back and relaxed. "I can't say I agree with your tactics."

"You're not working with amateurs, Major. Every one of those people out there are pros. Some are dressed in costumes like you, some are walking hand in hand like lovers on a holiday, some are playing the part of families enjoying the rides, others have taken over as attendants. We even have men stationed on roofs and in the dummy second-story offices with telescopes and binoculars." Kippmann's voice was soft, but it carried total conviction. "The killers will be found and stopped before they do their dirty work. The odds we've stacked against Kelly meeting his goal and deade are staggering."

"Tell that to Oskar Rondheim," Pitt said. "There's the flaw that knocks the hell out of your good intentions-you don't know your adversary."

The silence lay heavy in the small room. Kippmann rubbed his palms across his face, then shook his head slowly, as if he were about to do something he intensely disliked. He picked up the ever-present briefcase and handed Pitt a folder marked simply 078-34.

"Granted, I haven't met him face to face, but he is no stranger to me." Kippmann read from the folder.

"'Oskar Rondheim, alias Max Rolland, alias Hugo von Klausen, alias Chatford Marazan, real name Carzo Butera, born in Brooklyn, New York, July 15, 1940. I could go on for hours about his arrests, his convictions.

He was pretty big along the New York waterfront. Organized the fishermen's union. Got muscled out by the syndicate and dropped from sight. Over the past few years we kept close tabs on Mr. Rondheim and his albatross industries. We finally put two and two together and came up with Carzo Butera."

A sly grin crept across Pitts face. "You've made your point. It would be interesting to see what your scandal sheet has to say about me."

"I have it right here," Kippmann said, matching Pitts grin. "Care to see it?"

"No, thanks. It couldn't tell me anything that I don't already know," Pitt said flatly. "I would be interested though in seeing what you have on Kirsti Fyrie."

Kippmann's expression went blank and he looked as if he had been shot. "I was hoping you wouldn't get around to her."

"You have her file also." It was more statement than question.

"Yes," Kippmann answered briefly. He saw there was no way out, no argument that would stand. He sighed with uneasiness and handed Pitt rUe number 883-57.

Pitt reached out and took the folder. For ten minutes he examined the contents, leafing very slowly, almost reluctantly from documents to photos, from reports to letters. Then finally, like a man in a dream, he closed the folder and gave it back to Kippmann.

"I can't believe it. It's ridiculous. I won't believe it."

"I'm afraid what you read is true, all of it." Kippmann's voice was quiet, even.

Pitt pulled the back of his hand across his eyes.

"Never, never in a thousand years would I have His voice faded away.

"It threw us out of gear too. Our first hint came when we could find no trace of her on New Guinea."

"I know. I'd already pegged her for a phony on that score."

"You knew? But how?"

"When we had dinner together in Reykjavik, I described a recipe that called for shark meat wrapped in a seaweed known as echidna. Miss Fyrie accepted it.

Rather strange behavior from a missionary who spent years in the jungles of New Guinea, don't you think?"

"How the hell should I know." Kippmann shrugged. "I don't have the vaguest notion as to what an echidna is."

"An echidna," Pitt said, "is an egg-laying spiny anteater. A mammal very common to the landscape of New Guinea."

"I can't say I blame her for missing the catch."

"How would you react if I said I was going to barbecue a New York cut steak wrapped in porcupine quills?"

"I'd say something."

"You've got the idea."

Kippmann stared at Pitt with an admiring look.

"What put you on to her in the first place? You wouldn't have tricked her without a nudge, without a suspicious hint."

"Her tan," Pitt answered. "It was shallow-not burned deep like one acquired after years and months spent in a tropic jungle."

"You, sir, are very observant," Kippmann murmured thoughtfully. "But why… why bother to trip up someone you barely knew?"

"Partly for the same reason I'm standing here in this ridiculous wolf suit," Pitt said grimly. "I volunteered for your little manhunt for two reasons. One, I've got a score to even with Rondheim and Kelly, no more, no less.

Second, I'm still Special Projects Director for NUMA, and as such, my primary duty is to obtain the plans for Fyrie's undersea mineral probe. That's why I conned Kirsti-she knows where the blueprints are hidden. Boy something I shouldn't have, it gave me a wedge, to her."

Kippmann nodded. "Now I understand." He sat on a desk and toyed with a letter opener.

I have Kelly and his group in custody, I'll r to you and Admiral Sandecker for quesgood enough," Pitt snapped. "If you want my cooperation as an identifying witness, then promise me a few minutes alone with Rondheim-And full and complete custody of Kirsti Fyrie."

"Impossible!"

"What does Rondheim's future physical condition mean to you?"

"If I turned my back so you could kick him in the teeth, I couldn't let you have Kirsti Fyrie."

"You could," Pitt said positively. "Mostly because she isn't yours to give. If you're lucky, you might pin an accomplice charge on her. But that might strain our relations with Iceland, in event that wouldn't make our State Department exactly jump for joy."

"You're wasting your breath," Kippmann said impatiently. "She will be convicted of murder along with all the rest."

"Yours is not to convict, yours is to apprehend and arrest." Kippmann shook his head. "You don't understand-" He broke off as the door opened wide. Lazard stood framed in the doorway, his face ashen.

Kippmann stared at him curiously. "Dan, what is it?" Lazard wiped his brow and slumped into an empty chair. "De Croix and Castile have suddenly changed their planned excursion. They've shaken their escort and disappeared somewhere in the park. God only knows what can happen before we find them."

Frowning, baffled, Kippmann's face expressed a moment of utter uncomprehension. "Christ!" he exploded. "How could it happen? How could you lose them with half the federal agents in the state guarding their party?"

"There are twenty thousand people out there in the park right this minute," Lazard tone. "It doesn't take any great magician to replace two of them. feat of cleverness to Croix and Castile bitched. He shrugged helplessly. "Deal about our heavy security precautions from the second they stepped through the main gate. They went to the john together and gave us the slip by ducking out a side window, just like a pair of kids."

Pitt stood up. "Quickly, do you have their tour and scheduled stops?"

Lazard stared at him for a moment. "Yes, here, each amusement and exhibit and their time schedules." He handed Pitt a Xeroxed sheet of paper.

Pitt rapidly glanced at the schedule. Then a slow grin cut his face as he turned to Kippmann. "You'd better send me into the game, coach."y 'Major," Kippmann said unhappily. "I have the feeling I'm about to be blackmailed.

"As they say during campus riots, why won't you meet our demands?"

The slump of Kippmann's shoulders displayed as sure a sign of defeat as if he'd waved a white flag. He stared at Pitt. The eyes that stared back were disconcertingly steady.

Kippmann nodded. "Rondheim and Miss Fyrie are yours- They're staying in the Disneyland Hotel across the street. Adjoining rooms, 605 and 607."

"And Kelly, Marks, Von Hummel and the rest?"

"They're all there- Hermit Limited reserved the entire sixth floor." Kippmann rubbed his face uncomfortably. "Just what do you have in mind?"

"Rest easy. Five minutes with Rondheim. Then You can have him. Kirsti Fyrie I keep. Call her a little bonus from the N.I.A. too. Kippmann gave up completely. "You win. Now where are De Croix and Castile?"

"The obvious." Pitt smiled at Kippmann and Lazard.

The most obvious place where any two men who passed their childhood near the Spanish Main would head."

"God, you've hit it," Lazard said almost bitterly.

"The last stop on the schedule-The Pirates of the Caribbean."

Next to the cleverly engineered apparitions in the Disneyland Haunted House, The Pirates of the Caribbean is the most popular attraction in the world-famous park. Constructed on two underground levels that occupy nearly two acres'. the quarter-of-a-mile boat ride carries awed passengers through a maze of tunnels and vast rooms decorated as roving pirate ships and pillaged seaside towns, manned by almost a hundred lifelike figures that not only match the best of Madame Tussaud's, but who also sing, dance and loot.

Pitt was the last one up the entrance ramp to the landing where the attendants assist the paying customers into the boats at the start of the fifteen-minute excursion. The fifty or sixty people waiting in line waved to Pitt and made smiling remarks about his costume as he made his way behind Kippmann and Lazard. He waved back, wondering what the expressions on their faces would be if he were to suddenly whip off his wolf's mask and display his bandaged face. He could see at least ten small children who would never again want the Three Little Pigs read at bedtime.

Lazard grasped the managing attendant by the arm. "Quickly. you must stop the boats."

The attendant, a blond, lanky boy no more than twenty years of age, simply stood there in mute uncomprehension.

Lazard, obviously a man who disliked wasted conversation, moved hurriedly across the landing to the controls, disengaged the underwater traction chain that pulled the excursion boats, set the handbrake and turned to face the stunned boy again.

"Two men, two men together, have they taken the ride?"

"Don't know for sure, sir. There… there's been so many. I can't recall them all-" Kippmann stepped in front of Lazard and showed the boy the photographs of Castile and De Croix. "Do you recognize these men?"

The boy's eyes widened. "Yes, sir, now I remember." Then a frown spread across his youthful face.

"But they weren't alone. There were two other men with them."

"Four!" Kippmann shouted, turning about thirty heads. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, sir." The boy nodded his head violently.

"I'm positive. The boat holds eight people. The first four seats held a man and woman with two kids. The men in the photographs took the rear seats with two other men."

Pitt arrived just then, his breath coming in short pants, his hand clutching the handrail as he fought off the pain and exhaustion. "Was one of them a big guy with a bald head, hairy hands? A-nd the other, red-faced with a huge mustache and shgulders like an ape?"

The boy stared dumbly for a moment at Pitts disguise. Then his expression took on a half smile "You hit them exactly. A real pair. Like tough-looking Mutt and Jeff characters."

Pitt turned to Kippmann and Lazard. "Gentlemen," he said, his voice slightly muffled under the rubber wolf's head, "I think we've just missed our boat."

"For God's sake!" Kippmann murmured in exasperation. "We can't just stand here."

"No." Lazard shook his head. "We can't do that."

He nodded at the boy. "Call extension 309. Tell whoever answers that Lazard has relocated the missing party in The Pirates of the Caribbean. Tell them it's a red situation-the hunters are in there too." He turned back to Kippmann and Pitt. "The three of us can work along the catwalks and the backdrops until we reach them, and only hope we're not too late."

"How many boats ago did they board?" Pitt asked the boy.

The dazed boy could only stammer. "I… "Ten, maybe twelve. They should be sitting about between the building and — "

"This way!" Lazard almost snapped the words.

He disappeared through a doorway at the end of the landing marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.

As they moved into the blackness that cloaked the mechanical workings of the pirates, the sound of voices from the passengers of the stalled boats could be beard murmuring throughout the cavernous amusement ride.

Castile and De Croix, as well as their assassins, Pitt reflected, could have little suspicion as to the delay, but even so, it didn't seem to matter: there was every possibility that Kelly's and Rondheim's scheme had already been carried out. He fought off the ache in his chest and followed the squat, dim form of Kippmann past a storyland setting of five pirates burying a treasure chest. The figures seemed so lifelike it was difficult for Pitt to believe they were only electronically controlled mannequins. He was so engrossed in the simulated reality of the scene that he rammed into Kippmann, who had stopped abruptly.

"Easy, easy," Kippmann protested.

Lazard motioned to them to stay where they were as he moved catlike along a narrow corridor and leaned over the railing of a workman's gallery running over the canal that supported the boats. Then he waved Pitt and Kippmann forward.

"We got lucky for a change," he said. "Take a look." Pitt, his eyes not yet accustomed to the dark, stared below at a sight that never was-a wild fantasy night scene containing a band of at least thirty pirates burning and looting what seemed to be a replica of a miniature Port Royal or Panama City. Flames were shooting out of several buildings. while silhouettes of laughing buccaneers chased screaming make-believe girls around and around the back-lighted windows.

Boisterous singing was reverberating out of hidden speakers, giving the illusion that rape and pillage were merely good clean fun.

The canal the boats circuited through cut between the town buildings, lifting the viewers' eyes from a pair of pirates trying vainly to get a mule to pull a wagonload of their loot on the left to a trio of their shipmates drinking on a pile of wildly swaying wine barrels on the right. But it was the center of the canal that drew Pitts attention. There in a boat almost directly under a bridge that ran over the water were Castile and De C-roix, happily pointing out details of the wondrous scene like two schoolboys playing hookey at a Friday matinee. And, sitting ominously like disinterested statues on the seat directly in back of the South American Presidents, Pitt could make out the two men who had held his arms while Rondheim bad battered him to a pulp only two days before in Reykjavik.

Pitt glanced at the luminous dial of the orange faced Doxa watch on his wrist. Stan an hour and twenty minutes before Kelly's countdown. Too early, far too early, yet there were two of Rondheim's killers sitting not three feet from their intended victims. A very large Piece was missing from the puzzle. He had no doubt that Kelly told the truth about his timetable and that Rondheim would stick to it. But would he?

If Rondheim meant to take over Hermit Limited, it stood to reason that he just might make a change in plans.

This is your show, Dan." Kippmann spoke softly to the security director. "How do we take them?"

"No guns," Lazard said. "The last thing we want is a stray shot killing a child."

"Maybe we'd better wait for reinforcements," Kippmann said.

"No time," Lazard said. "We've kept the boats stopped too long already. Everyone is starting to get edgy, including those two characters in back of Castile and De Croix."

"Then we'll have to take a risk." Kippmann wiped a handkerchief across his damp brow. "Get the boats moving again. Then as soon as the one with our friends begins to cross under the bridge, we'll take them."

"Okay," Lazard agreed. "The bridge will give us cover to close within fifteen feet. I'll work around and come out of that doorway under the gunshop sign.

Kippmann. you hide behind the mule and wagon."

"Need an extra hand?" Pitt asked.

"Sorry, Major." Lazard gave Pitt a cool stare.

"You're hardly in shape for hand-to-hand combat." He paused and gripped Pitts shoulder. "You could play a vital role though."

"Say the word."

"By standing on the bridge in your wolf costume and miming with the pirates, you could distract those two in the boat long enough to give Kippmann and myself a few more seconds of insurance."

"I guess it beats hell out of matching wits with the three little pigs," Pitt said.

As soon as Lazard found a call phone and ordered the attendant to start the canal boats moving in two minutes, he and Kippmann dropped into the burning village behind the realistic-looking burning fronts and took their positions.

After he stumbled over the stuffed body of a pirate who supposedly had passed out from too much wine, Pitt reached down and relieved the mannequin of its cutlass and was surprised to find that it was a steel replica of the real thing. Even at close range he could only marvel at the true-to-life appearance of the mechanical pirates. The glass eyes set in brown wax faces stared unerringly in whatever direction the head was set, and the eyebrows raised up and down in unison with the lips as the strains of "Sixteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest" boomed from speakers concealed within their aluminum-frame bodies.

Pitt moved to the center of the arched bridge over the canal and joined in the singing amid three merry buccaneers who sat with their legs dangling over the fake stone parapet, swirling their cutlasses around in circles in time with the songfest. Pitt in his Big Bad Wolf suit and the frolicking pirates presented a strange sight to the people in the boat as they waved and sang the famous old seafaring ditty. The children, a girl about ten and a boy, Pitt guessed, no more than seven,oon recognized him as the three-dimensional cartoon character and began waving back.

Castile and De Croix also laughed and then saluted him in Spanish, pointing and joking to themselves while the tall, bald assassin and his accomplice, the broad-shouldered brute, sat stony-faced, unmoved by the performance. It occurred to Pitt that he was on thin ice, on which not merely a false move, but the tiniest miscalculation of any detail could spell death to the men, woman and children who sat innocently enjoying his antics.

Then he saw the boat move.

The bow was just passing under his feet when the shadowy figures of Kippmann and Lazard leaped from their cover, sprinted through the mass of animated figures and dropped into the rear of the boat. The surprise was complete. But Pitt hadn't noticed. No fuss, no elaborate flourish. no token words of warning, he coldly and efficiently shoved the blade of his cutlass under the armpit and into the chest cavity of the pirate sitting nearest him.

A curious thing happened. The pirate dropped his cutlass, his lips contorted into a soundless oval, eyes registering astonishment and shock, a shock almost immediately replaced by a final awareness. Then the eyes turned up in the head and he fell forward splashing into the now empty canal beneath the bridge.

The second pirate failed to react in the split second when he might have parried Pitts swing. He started to say something. Then, with cutlass still dripping red, Pitt put all his strength into a backhand slash that bit into the base of the pirate's neck at the left shoulder blade.

The man grunted and flung up the opposite arm, made as if to roll clear, but his feet slipped on the uneven flooring of the bridge and he came down on both knees, falling over sideways in a rubbery heap, blood pulsing from his half-opened mouth.

Pitt had one fleeting glimpse of a flashing metallic glint in the fiery light, and the instinctive slight inclination of his head saved his life as the third pirate's cutlass sliced through the crooked top hat that was perched on the wolf mask. Too fir; Pitt had pushed his luck too far. He had caught two of Rondheim's men before they knew what was happening, but the third had gained sufficient time to counter Pitts attack and catch him off balance.

Blindly fending off the lunging thrusts, staggering backward under the fury of the other man's assault, Pitt hurled himself convulsively sideways and over the parapet, and plunged into the cool water of the canal. Even as he dived, Pitt had heard the swish of the pirate's blade as it hissed through the empty air where his body had stood only an instant before. And then there was the sudden shock as his shoulder collided with vicious force against the shallow bottom of the canal. The pain exploded in him and everything seemed to dissolve and stop. 3t "Yo ho ho, sixteen men on a dead man's chest.

God, Pitt thought through the haze, why don't those mechanical bastards sing something else? Like a diagnostic specialist, he carefully explored his bruised body-the areas of pain, the position of his arms and legs in the flame-sparkled water. His ribs felt as if they were burning inside his chest, the fire spreading into his back and shoulders. Pulling himself onto the landing, Pitt stood up unsteadily, swayed and only kept erect by using the cutlass as a cane, somewhat bewildered to find the hilt still imbedded tightly in his right hand.

He crouched on one knee, fighting to catch his breath, waiting for his heart to slow down to a reasonably nominal rate and scanned the make-believe set, his eyes trying desperately to pierce the darkness beyond the flaming half light. The bridge was empty, the third pirate was gone, and the boat was just disappearing around a curve into the next gallery. He turned in the opposite direction just in time to see another sightseeing boat approaching up the canal.

All these things he noted mechanically, without consciously classifying their significance. All he could think of was that a killer was somewhere close by, disguised as one of the pirates. He felt helpless, the mannequins all began to look alike, and the action on the bridge had happened with such speed that he hadn't been able to perceive any details of the man's costume.

Almost frantically, he tried to plan the next step.

There was no more chance in the world for surprise on his part-the human pirate knew what Pitt looked like, while he was helpless to detect the real from the fake and had now lost the opportunity to move first. Even as these thoughts flashed through Pitts mind, he knew he must act.

A second later, he was half running, half stumbling along the quay, gasping at every step as waves of pain shot through every tendon of his body. He burst through a black curtain and into the next stage set. It had a huge domed chamber dimly lit for a nighttime scene.

Built into the far wall, a scaled-down version of a pirate's corsair ship, complete with dummy crew and Jolly Roger rippling in a breeze urged on by a hidden electric fan, fired stimulated broadsides from replica cannon across fifty feet of water and over the heads of the people in the excursion boat at a miniature fortress sitting high atop a jagged cliff on the opposite side of the cavernous chamber.

It was too dark to make out any details on the excursion boat. Pitt could detect no movement at the stern and he felt certain that Kippmann and Lazard had everything under their command. Everything, that is, that was within their reach. As his eye, began to penetrate the heavy darkness, of the simulated nighttime harbor between the ship and the fortress, he saw that the bodies in the boat were all huddled below the sides of the hull.

He was about halfway up the maintenance ramp to the deck of the corsair ship when he knew why, when he heard a strange sound, the almost silent thump of a gun with a silencer. And then suddenly he was standing in back of a form in a pirate costume who was holding something in his hand and pointing it at the little boat in the water.

Pitt looked at him curiously, with only a detached sort of interest. He raised the cutlass and brought the flat side of the blade down on the pirate's wrist.

The gun dropped from the man's wristover the railing and into the water below. The pirate swung around, the white hair falling from under a scarlet bandanna that was knotted around his head, the cold blue-gray eyes flashing with anger and frustration, the lines about the mouth deeply etched. He searched the comical figure that had so coolly killed two of his comrades. His voice was hard and metallic.

"It seems I am your prisoner."

Pitt wasn't fooled for an instant. The words were only a stall, a curtain to shield the lighg move that would surely come. The man behind the voice was dangerous and he was playing for high stakes. But Pitt had more than an edged weapon-he had a newly found strength that was suddenly coursing through his body like a gathering tidal wave. He began to smile.

"Ah-so it is you, Oskar."

Pitt paused significantly, watching Rondheim like a cat. Holding Hermit Limited's chief executioner on the end of the cutlass. Pitt pulled off the rubber wolf's head. Rondheim's face was still set and hard, but the eyes betrayed total incomprehension. Pitt dropped the mask, bracing himself for the moment he had planned for but never really believed would happen. Slowly, he unwrapped the bandages with one hand, letting the gauze fall to the deck in little unraveled piles, building the suspense. When he finished, he gazed steadily at Rondheim and stood back. Rondheim's lips began to work in a half-formed question and dazed expression spread across his features.

"Sorry you can't recall the face, Oskar," Pitt said quietly. "But you didn't leave a great deal to recognize.

Rondheim stared at the swollen eyes, the bruised and puffed lips, the sutures that laced the cheekbones and eyebrows, and then his mouth fell open and in a whisper he breathed, "Pitt!"

Pitt nodded.

"It's not possible," Rondheim gasped.

Pitt laughed. "I apologize for ruining your day, but it just goes to prove that you can't always trust a computer."

Rondheim looked at Pitt long and searchingly.

"And the others?"

"With one exception, they're all alive and mending the broken bones you so generously dispensed." Pitt focused his gaze beyond Rondheim's shoulder and saw that the excursion boat was safely entering the next gallery.

"Then it's back to you and me again, Major. Under conditions more favorable to you than those I enjoyed in the gym. But don't get your hopes up." A sort of smile twisted the tight lips. "fairies are no match for men."

"I agree," Pitt returned. He hurled the cutlass over Rondheim's head into the water and stood back. He looked down and examined his hands. They would have to do the job. He took several slow deep breaths, ran his hands through his wet hair, rubbed them roughly on the sides of his costume and then gave a final flex to his fingers. He was ready.

"I misled you, Oskar. Round one was an unequal contest. You had the numbers, the planning and the initiative from the beginning. How are you alone, Oskar, without your paid help to prop your victims? How are you when you're on strange ground? You still have time to escape. Nothing stands between you and a chance for freedom except me.

But there's the rub, Oskar. You have to get by me."

Rondheim's teeth showed. "I don't need anyone to break you, Pitt.

My only regret is that I don't have the time to stretch out your next lesson in pain."

"Okay, Oskar, so much for the psychological bullshit," Pitt said calmly. He knew exactly what he was going to do. True, he was still weak and dead tired, but that was more than canceled out by the selfdetermination, the invisible figures of Lillie, Tidi, Sam Kelly, Hunnewell and the rest who stood at his side giving him strength he could have never possessed alone.

An uncertain smile came to Rondheim's mouth as he crouched in a karate stance. The smile didn't last.

Pitt hit him. He hit Rondheim with a right cross, a perfectly timed punch that jerked Rondheim's head sideways and staggered him into the ship's main mast.

Deep down Pitt had known that he had little chance of taking Rondheim in a prolonged fight, that he couldn't hold the other man off for more than a few minutes, but he had schemed and timed for the element of surprise, the one advantage that played on his side before the karate blows could lash his face again. As it turned out, the advantage was a small one.

Rondheim was incredibly tough; he had taken a hard blow, yet he was already recovering. He sprang from the mast and threw a kick to Pitts head, missing by a scant inch as Pitt ducked easily away. The ill timing cost him. Pitt caught Rondheim with a series of left jabs and another short, hard right that sent him to his knees on the deck, holding a hand to a broken, bleeding nose.

"You've improved," Rondheim whispered through the streaming blood.

"I said I misled you." Pitt was hanging back tensed in a half boxing, half judo position, waiting for Rondheim's next move. "In reality, I'm about as queer as Carzo Butera."

With the sound of his true name, Rondheim could see death's fingers reaching out to touch him, but he kept his voice under iron control, his bleeding face an expressionless mask. "It seems I underestimated you, Major."

"You were an easy man to lead astray, Oskar, or should I call you by the name on your birth certificate?

No matter, your run has played out."

Mouthing a string of curses through blood-speck lips, his face now frozen in insane hate, Rondheim flung himself at Pitt. He hadn't taken a second step when Pitt brought an uppercut from the deck and rammed it as solidly as a sledgehammer into Rondheim's teeth. Pitt had given it everything he had, thrown his shoulder and body into it with such force that his ribs screamed in agony and he knew even as he did it that he could never marshal the strength to do it again.

There came a dull squish sound, mingled with a muffled cracking noise. Rondheim's teeth were jerked from their sockets and imbedded in torn lips as Pitts wrist snapped. For two or three seconds Rondheim seemed to straighten and stand there poised like a frame frozen in a movie projector, then, with the unbelievably slow, irrevocable finality of a falling tree, he crumbled to the deck and lay still.

Pitt stood and panted through clenched teeth, his right wrist hanging — limply at his side. He stared up at the little lights flashing from the make-believe cannon on the fortress and then he noticed that the next excursion boat was passing through the chamber. He blinked his eyes to focus more clearly and the sweat ran into them and stung. There was something he had to do. At first the thought repulsed him, but he shook it aside, determined that there could be no other way.

He stepped over the sprawling legs of the unconscious man and bent down, propping one of Rondheim's arms against the deck and the bottom base of the railing. Then, riisin,g one of his feet, he stomped on it, shuddering inwardly as the bone broke a few inches below the elbow.

Rondheim stirred sluggishly and moaned.

"That's for Jerome Lillie," Pitt said, his voice bitter.

He repeated the process with Rondheim's other arm, noting with grim satisfaction that his victim's eyes had opened and were staring vacantly, pupils enlarged, in a glassy state of physical shock.

"Score that one ior Tidi Royal."

Pitt moved automatically as he turned Rondheim's body so that the legs were pointing in the opposite direction, propped as the arms had been on the deck and trained The thinking, emotional part of Pitts mind was C, no longer part of his brain. It floated outside its cranial vault, keeping enouph contact to pull the strings that made the hands and feet work. Inside the bruised, cut, and in some places. deserted shelter, the machine was quietly, smoothly ticking over. The deadly exhaustion and pain were pushed into the background, forgotten for the moment until his mind regained full control.

There. he jumped on Rondheim's left leg.

"Mark that up for Sam Kelly."

Rondheim screamed a scream that died in his throat. The glazed blue-gray eyes stared upward intg Pitts. "Kill me," he whispered. "why don't you kill me?"

"If you lived for a thousand years," Pitt said grimly, "you could never make up for all the pain and misery you've caused. I want you to know what it's like, feel the agony as your bones part, the helplessness of lying there and watching it happen. I should break your spine like you did Lillie's; watch you rot your life away in a wheelchair. But that would be wishful Thinking, Oskar. Your trial might last a few weeks, even months, but there isn't a jury in the world that won't hand you a death sentence without leaving the box. No, I'd be doing you a favor by killing you, and that would never do. This one is for Willie Hunnewell."

There was no grin on Pitts face, no gleam of anticipation in the deep green eyes. He leaped for the fourth and final time and the hoarse, horrible scream of pain rolled over the ship's decks, echoed through the chamber, then slowly faded and died.

With a feeling of emptiness, almost sadness, Pitt sat there on a hatch cover and stared down at the broken figure of Rondheim. It wasn't a pretty sight. The fury within him had found its outlet and now he felt totally drained as he waited for his lungs and heart to slow back to normal.

He was sitting there like that when Kippmann and Lazard came charging across the deck, followed by a small army of security men. They said nothing. there was nothing they could say, at least not for a full sixty seconds, not until the full significance of what Pitt had done became clear to them.

Finally Kippmann broke the silence. "A little rough on him, weren't you?"

"He's Oskar Rondheim," Pitt said vaguely.

Are you sure?"

"I seldom forget a face," Pitt said. "Especially when it belongs to a man who kicked the hell out of me."

Lazard tur-led to look at him. His lips twisted in a wry smile. "What was it I said about you hardly being in shape for hand-to-hand combat?"

"Sorry I couldn't get to Rondheim before he started popping away with his silencer," Pitt said. "Did he hit anyone?"

"Castile was nicked in the arm," Lazard said.

"After we cold-cocked those two clowns in the stern seat, I turned and saw you playing Errol Flynn on the bridge. I knew then we weren't out of the woods yet, so I threw myself over the family up front and forced them to the bottom of the boat."

"Likewise with our visitors from Latin America."

Kippmann smiled and rubbed a bruise on his forehead.

"They thought I was crazy and gave me a rough go for a minute."

"What happens to Kelly and Hermit Limited?" Pitt asked.

"We'll arrest Mr. Kelly along with his internationally wealthy partners, of course, but the chances of convicting men of their stature are almost impossible. I should imagine the governments involved will hurt them where it hurts them most-in the pocketbook. The fines they'll probably have to pay should build the Navy a new aircraft carrier."

"That's a small price to pay for the suffering they've caused," Pitt said wearily.

"None the less, it is a price," Kippmann murmured.

"Yes… yes, it is that. Thank God they were stopped."

Kippmann nodded to Pitt. "We have you to thank, Major Pitt, for blowing the whistle on Hermit Limited."

Lazard smbed suddenly. "And I'd like to be the first to express my gratitude for your Horatius-at-the-bridge act. Kippmann and I couldn't be standing here now if you hadn't taken the cue when you did." He put his hand on Pitts shoulder. "Tell me something. I'm curious."

"About what?"

"How did you know those pirates on the bridge were real flesh and blood?"

"As the man once said," Pitt said casually, "there we were just sitting on the bridge eyeball to eyeball… and I could swear I saw the other guys blink."