The Alpha Deception

Chapter 1

“Lieutenant Ortiz is here, Major Paz,” shouted the young soldier as he ran down the runway. “He’s just been checked through the gate.”

“Hurry him up, then,” ordered Guillermo Paz. “And be quick about it.”

The young Nicaraguan stopped long enough to make a semblance of a salute and ran back in the other direction.

Major Guillermo Paz too was a native Nicaraguan but no longer felt it. He had spent his late teens in the hell of the Samoza dictatorship and had seen his father tortured and killed. He had become one of many Sandinista rebel leaders, and when the revolution was over, Soviet advisers picked him out to go to Moscow to master the rudiments of true soldiering, killing, and leading. He became, in effect, a troubleshooter for them, a spy in his own country — though that was not how he saw it. Three years in the Soviet Union with some of the best military minds in the world had spoiled him. Sent back here to command a crucial air base on the Lago de Nicaragua just south of Acoyapa, Paz realized all at once how backward and infantile his country was. The soldiers were inept and unreliable. If not for the even greater ineptitude on the part of the Contras, the present government would have gone the way of the last.

Major Paz stood rigidly as the jeep carrying the latest Soviet-trained pilot approached. Although Paz was of average height, he was of anything-but-average build. A near-lifetime of weightlifting, which started with his hoisting feed onto trucks as a boy, had given him a midsection that was essentially a single solid block. He had no neck to speak of, and a tremendous chest made him an impossible fit for standard-issue uniforms. He wore his black hair never more than a quarter-inch long, in a stubble cut that showed off the thick scar which ran across the right side of his scalp. The only luxury Paz allowed himself was the thick mustache he groomed twice daily and stroked constantly. He was stroking it now as the jeep’s brakes squealed before him.

The Acoyapa base was important for its new supply of fifteen Soviet-made Hind-D helicopters, the most awesome warships in the world of guerrilla fighting. The general consensus in Moscow was that twenty Hinds could do more damage to the Contras’ jungle strongholds than twenty thousand Soviet troops. Each ship was fitted for 128 27-millimeter unguided rockets and six laser-guided antitank missiles. Add to this the six machine-gun cannons perched beneath both of the strangely curved wings, aimed by sights located in the pilot’s helmet, and the result was a truly incredible fighting machine.

Paz could never help but gawk when his eyes fell upon one of his Hinds. Its ponderous-looking, squat frame gave the ship a slow, lumbering appearance — a hulking, overloaded menace which in reality was a quick and agile flying tank. Armor plating rendered it safe from anything but a perfectly placed missile. Its handling was so precise that any decent pilot could slide it between a pair of trees with only inches to spare. Its navigational system was laser-based and its turbo boosters could achieve speeds exceeding 250 knots. All this considered, Paz supposed the best thing about the Hind-D was that the Americans had nothing like it and desperately sought a prototype to copy. There were even rumors afloat that a million-dollar bounty had been offered to any man who could bring one back to the United States intact. But outside of Russia the only fifteen in existence were right here on this base, and the security employed by Paz day and night made theft or even approach impossible. Even Cuba was without the warships. Paz was not about to disappoint the Soviet “advisers” who had arranged this command for him.

The latest pilot climbed down from the back of the jeep dressed in full flying gear and approached Paz directly.

“Manuel Ortiz reporting for duty, sir.”

Paz returned his salute. “You’re late.”

“Rebels blew up another bridge. Traffic had to be rerouted.”

Paz grunted his displeasure.

Ortiz looked at him dutifully. “I could take her out over their camps if you wish,” he offered, gazing over the major’s shoulder at the Hind.

“Not authorized.”

“Who’s to know?” Ortiz returned with enough seriousness to make Paz smile with pride. There was something about this man he liked. Dedication. Professionalism. Qualities the major had seen all too infrequently since his return to Nicaragua. And this pilot was a cut above the regular troops in appearance as well. Older to start with, easily over six feet and well muscled. His beard was neatly trimmed and speckled with gray. His worn features were framed by rather long brown hair. His face was ruddy, creased, and punctuated with scars, the most prominent of which ran through his left eyebrow. Ortiz was obviously a veteran of several wars previous; maybe he was even a native Soviet. He certainly had the eyes for it: black, piercing, and empty like those of a shark. Paz looked into them and saw enough of himself to be content.

“Stick to the flight plan,” Paz instructed.

“It would be an honor to have you join me, Major.”

“Regulations insist I remain on the base for the duration of your test flight.”

Ortiz smiled warmly, standing at ease. “There was a time, sir, when we fought without regulations. Survival was all that mattered, rules no more than what our hearts told us were right for the time.”

“You’re a poet as well as a pilot, Lieutenant.”

“Late nights in the jungles, Major, make our thoughts turn inward.”

“Yes,” Paz agreed easily. Give him another hundred men like Ortiz and he’d have the rebel bastards whipped in no time.

“I’d better get moving,” said Ortiz, starting for the Hind’s cockpit ladder after another salute.

“You know the reporting procedure,” Paz advised. “Take good care of her.”

Ortiz saluted yet again. “Like a virgin on her wedding night, Major.”

Paz watched Ortiz climb into the cockpit and fire up the jet-powered engines. Seconds later, the Hind lifted gracefully, straight up with a slight list to the right. Paz held the green cap over his stubble-covered head as the ship’s huge propellers sliced through the wind, driving it straight forward. Ortiz steadied her fifty feet up and headed out over the airfield as he climbed gracefully on his planned northeasterly course.

Paz was still watching the Hind’s shrinking shape vanish in the distance when a jeep pulled up alongside him. Its single passenger, garbed in flight gear, emerged from the backseat.

“Lieutenant Manuel Ortiz, sir, reporting for flight duty,” the man announced, saluting.

The major’s mouth dropped as he looked back once more at the horizon where the Hind had already disappeared.

Blaine McCracken cut in the turbo boosters and watched the Hind-D’s airspeed indicator climb toward 250 knots. The cockpit was still strange to him. He had spent several weeks drilling on the basics of the mission, from perfecting his Spanish to mastering the Hind’s elaborate control panel from reconstructed pictures.

Damn Russians, though, didn’t know when to leave well enough alone. The control panel he was facing now was altogether different from the one he had drilled on, which wouldn’t have been so bad if not for the fact that all labels and instructions were in Russian. He had already lost critical time trying to pick up airspeed while keeping his altitude low to avoid being tracked on radar. The plan was intricate, the timing much too fine to lose even a second.

“Move it, girl,” he said under his breath, “or I’ll have to pinch your behind.”

Blaine checked his coordinates: an hour of flying time to the landing site where he would be meeting his partner on the mission, Johnny Wareagle. Blaine was heading fast for the Tuma Grande River when a warning panel he recognized as the intruder alert screen flashed with three green blips.

“Well, girl,” he said softly, “looks like we got company.”

“Red leader to base. Red leader to base.”

“This is base,” returned Guillermo Paz.

“We have the enemy in our sights. Repeat, the enemy is in our sights. Should we engage?”

“Negative, Red leader. I will have Green, Blue, and Yellow units rendezvous in your sector immediately. Stay on his tail. Repeat, stay on his tail.”

Paz gave the appropriate instructions to the rest of his units and breathed easier. Imagine losing a Hind. … His career would be ruined. He had resisted the initial temptation to stalk the stolen Hind with more of her sisters, opting instead for four units of three standard helicopter gunships each. Certainly they would be sufficient to get the job done in this case. After all, where did the thief plan to fly the stolen Hind? There was no possible way he could get out of the country, none at all. Paz reminded himself that he must remain calm. If need be, he could still order his gunships to destroy the Hind and then fabricate a story to cover the truth. Accidents did happen.

Paz stroked his mustache and dialed up a fresh frequency. “Acoyapa base to Falcon One,” he said to the man piloting the Hind. “Surrender or die.”

McCracken did not acknowledge the warning. The three choppers were holding their positions behind him as he expected they would, waiting for others to mass from different directions to box him into a forced landing. He had no chance of reaching his destination. Unless….

Blaine turned his eyes to the targeting controls, range finders, and dual joystick handles. Thankfully, the weapons systems’ positioning remained just as he had studied it. He switched on the AUTO switch and practiced rotating his head. Beneath the wings the air cannons turned with him. His 128 unguided missiles were laser-aimed and made for air-to-air combat. Comfortable with the control panel, Blaine took a deep breath and brought the big agile bird around.

“Red leader to base! Falcon One has turned and is coming at us in an attack run. Repeat, attack run!”

Paz slammed his callused hand down on the desktop. This thief was surely insane. What could he possibly hope to gain from such a display? Reenforcements would be closing by now. The thief would know that. An act of desperation obviously. Well, Paz would just have to stop him here.

“Destroy him, Red Unit,” Paz ordered. “Repeat, destroy Falcon One.”

“Roger, base.”

The three choppers had moved into an attack spread when Blaine locked the middle one into the firing grid sketched over his face mask. Blaine fired a burst from his wing-mounted air cannons; the chopper exploded into a jet of orange flames as the remaining two converged on him from opposing angles, guns clacking. It would take a perfect shot, however, to disable the heavily armored Hind. Blaine could feel the bullets banging off the ship’s steel hull, but he knew they were merely distractions to allow the smaller ships to draw close enough to achieve sure hits with their missiles.

The strategy was wise. Each carried two missiles and only one of the four would have to impact to force the Hind-D into an unscheduled landing or worse.

The choppers whirled closer.

Blaine could take one out easily, but in the impossibly short period of time for a man unfamiliar with the controls, two seemed a long shot. But there was a chance.

McCracken dipped evasively to buy the time he needed, swinging round to the north once more. The choppers corrected their attack angle and started in again.

Blaine went into his swing. It was not something an intelligent pilot would have done, but then Blaine was hardly a pilot at all. Gnashing his teeth from the G-forces, he somehow kept both thumbs poised on the firing buttons of his twin cannons, sending a non-stop barrage that scarred the sky as Blaine circled around behind his targets.

Blaine could only hope he had figured the remaining choppers’ positions properly. An explosion pounded his eardrums and shook him forward against the safety straps. He felt the Hind whirling out of control, and when the second explosion came it was all he could do to keep his hands on the navigational stick. His trembling hands held on to it desperately as the Hind swooned lower, treetops directly beneath him now, a vast green blanket into which he seemed sure to be wrapped.

Guillermo Paz sat anxiously by the radio. Over one minute had passed since Red Unit’s last report, an eternity in battle. Already he was dreading the call he would have to make to Managua if the impossible happened and the bastard somehow got away. More than his career was at stake.

Crackle, crackle, crackle….

“Base, do you read?” came a garbled voice through the static.

“This is Base,” Paz returned, squeezing the microphone’s base.

“He’s down, Base. We got him. Down ourselves but….”

Crackle….

“Where? Request coordinates.”

Crackle…

“North of … north …” crackle … “of Santo Domingo….”

It was enough to go on, plenty. Somewhere north of the town of Santo Domingo. The rest of Paz’s fleet was already in the area. He might be able to salvage this mess after all.

The Green Unit leader saw the white wing protruding from the ground brush and radioed in.

“We’ve got him, sir. Down in the brush, two miles north of Santo Domingo.”

“Land and report.”

Six of the nine choppers landed in an open field eighty yards from the brush that concealed the stolen Hind’s carcass. The soldiers grouped together and approached, warily, with leveled guns.

The Hind’s wing sharpened as they drew closer, poking up from the thick brush where the rest of its corpse must have been scattered in the crash. Strange there was no smoke, the leader reckoned, nor any evidence of explosion or smell of fuel. It was not until he came upon the wing that he realized why.

“Por Dios,” he muttered, touching it. “It’s made of wood!”

It had been nearly an hour since Blaine had passed over the Ditch Point after issuing the report of his own demise. The static had been the touch that clinched the authenticity of his words, he figured, managed through a means no more elaborate than crumpling sections of navigational maps one after the other. Johnny Wareagle had planted the fake wing at the Ditch Point, the idea being that in case of an emergency, the wing would distract pursuers long enough to allow Blaine to reach the border. Things hadn’t gone exactly as planned, but they had gone well enough.

McCracken didn’t need any of his crumpled maps to tell him he was coming up on Honduras and the landing site just west of Bocay where the rest of his team had established a small camp and had a Hercules transport waiting. He landed the Hind next to the Hercules without further incident and waited for Johnny, who would be making his way here by jeep from the Ditch Point.

Two hours later, a huge figure appeared in the opening of the small tent where Blaine was resting. He gazed up into the eyes of the giant Indian.

“Musta drove pretty damn fast, Indian.”

“Speed is relative, Blainey. For some a mile is the same as a step. For others …”

Blaine nodded his understanding, still gazing up. Wareagle admitted to seven feet and might have easily exceeded that by an inch or two. His hair was tied in a ponytail, and his flesh was baked bronze by years of living in the outdoors following four tours of duty in Nam in Captain Blaine McCracken’s commando unit. For the first time since those years, Wareagle was garbed in a set of camouflage fatigues.

“The uniform suits you, Johnny.”

“A reminder of the hellfire. In the jungle today it tried to come back to me until the spirits chased it away.”

“I figure those same spirits moved the Honduras border a bit to make life easy for me in the end.”

“It would not be beyond them.”

McCracken nodded at that. He had seen Johnny’s mystical powers at work too often to challenge them, first in Nam and then much later on a snow-swept night in Maine when the fate of the country had hung in the balance.

“What next, Blainey?” the big Indian wondered.

“First off, I’m going to make sure that Hind-D gets delivered safely to Ben Metcalf in Colorado Springs. I didn’t spend two months of my life preparing for this to see it get fucked up somehow. I like seeing things through to the end.”

Wareagle nodded knowingly. “Sometimes the ends are not ours to control, Blainey. Man is a creature of constant beginnings. Your constant obsession with finishing leads you on an empty journey that can never end. We are nothing more than creatures of our destinies unless the spirits guide us.”

“You sound like a travel agent for the soul.”

“The spirits are the agents. I am just the interpreter.”

“They furnish your words concerning me this time?”

“They furnish all.” Wareagle hesitated. “I worry for you still, Blainey. So restless is your manitou. So driven are you to pursue that which you cannot identify.”

“But we have identified it, Indian; it’s what lured you out of your retirement villa up in Maine and got me away from sorting paper clips in France: the world’s gone nuts. Innocent people are dropping dead all the time. The madmen are taking over and there are only a few of us left to keep the balance straight.”

“You did not throw it off by yourself, Blainey,” Wareagle told him. “And yet that is how you seek to restore it. Ever since the hellfire …”

“The real hellfire was the five years I was out, Indian. Now I’m back but I’m doing things my way, on my terms. Ben wanted a Hind. I owed him. Straight and simple.” He paused. “Hope I didn’t forget to tell you how great it is working with you again. No one else could have pulled off that trick with the fake wing.”

“Men see what they expect to. The trick is to give it to them.”

“The trick is to stay alive, Indian. Where you off to from here, back to the wilds of Maine?”

“A national convention of Sioux in Oklahoma, Blainey. The time has come to accept my heritage once more, to accept myself as Wanblee-Isnala.”

“Wan what?”

“My Sioux name as christened by Chief Silver Cloud.”

“And what’s his Sioux name?”

“Unah Tah Seh Deh Koni-Sehgehwagin.”

“Give him my best.”

Chapter 2

President Lyman Scott didn’t stop to remove his overcoat upon reaching the White House. Instead he made straight for the elevator, located ten yards from his private entrance, that would whisk him down to the secret conference room, deep underground. Scott was a big, raw-boned, athletic man, and even his exceptionally fit Secret Service guards had to struggle to keep up with him.

Especially today.

A man with thick glasses and thinning hair was waiting for him at the elevator.

“Are they all here, Ben?” the President asked.

“Yes, Mr. President.”

The aide waited until the three Secret Service men had entered the compartment after the President before pressing the down arrow. The elevator had only two stops, one underground and another at ground level where they had just entered.

Lyman Scott stripped off his overcoat and scarf. He had been president for just over two years and for a portion of that period seemed well in control of his duties. He had run on a platform of sanity and sense, especially when dealing with the Soviets. Upon taking office he initiated a series of summits with a progressive Soviet leader who felt, as he did, that a constant dialogue was the most efficient way of ensuring future peace. The country rallied behind him, a long-sought-after goal at last to be achieved. But there were costs. As a show of good faith, Scott kept his campaign pledge to drastically cut back on defense spending and reorganize the military community. There was grumbling and resistance, but the process nonetheless was underway.

Then came firm evidence of an active Soviet presence in Central America, Syria, and Iran. While claiming to bargain in good faith, the Soviets had been building up foreign divisions throughout the entire duration of the peace talks. Russian leaders insisted they were even then pulling back, but the damage had already been done. When Scott refused to respond strongly, even militarily, the polls came up squarely against him. The country believed its President had been played for a fool, and men Scott should have been able to trust failed him at every turn, feeling betrayed themselves by his earlier policies. He was labeled weak. A cartoon picturing a chicken cowering from a bullying bear made the op-ed pages of several major newspapers. For the past two months, Scott had weathered a storm which showed no signs of letting up.

The elevator doors slid open. The President left his aide and guards out in the corridor and passed through a high-security door into the Tomb.

The four men already present immediately stood.

“Forget the formality, gentlemen,” Scott said by way of greeting. He tossed his overcoat and scarf onto a couch and moved to his customary seat at the head of the conference table. It was built to accommodate up to twenty, but today only five chairs were taken, the occupants of the other ones having disappeared one at a time over the past few weeks with the evaporation of the President’s trust in his own advisers. It had been paranoia, in fact, that had led him to convene this meeting here in the Tomb instead of in the usual briefing room. The isolation was devastatingly apparent; each word spoken seemed to echo through the narrow emptiness of the chamber. The Tomb was barren but for the maps that hung on the walls and for the single red phone perched on the conference table within the President’s reach. The light came harsh and bright from the recessed ceiling; for some unknown reason there was no dimmer switch.

Scott sighed deeply and met, in turn, the gazes of each of the four men before him. To his left was William Wyler Stamp, a career intelligence officer who had revitalized a CIA that had come under fire during the last administration. Stamp was urbane and dapper, with a quiet demeanor more befitting a professor than a spymaster.

Sitting opposite each other, and just as ideologically divergent, were Secretary of Defense George Kappel and Secretary of State Edmund Mercheson. Kappel was a lifelong friend of the President, which kept him in the administration despite his perpetual hawkishness and seemingly congenital distrust of the Soviets. On the other hand, Lyman Scott had known Mercheson for only one year longer than he’d been president. A former senator from Michigan, Mercheson’s pointed nose and slight German accent doomed him to be forever likened to the legendary Henry Kissinger. The press often labeled him “Merchinger” or “Kisseson.” He was Scott’s chief supporter when it came to Soviet relations and the architect of a controversial disarmament treaty the President had been on the verge of signing before the rug had been pulled out from under his administration. Past sixty now and generally thought to be past his prime, Mercheson nonetheless enjoyed a comfortable grasp of the issues and the unusual ability to pass on his opinions in clear, concise terms.

The last occupant of the Tomb was Ryan Sundowner, director of the Bureau of Scientific Intelligence; BSI for short, but better known as the Toy Factory. By far the youngest of the group, Sundowner wore his brown wavy hair long and opted for a tattered tweed sports jacket rather than the traditional Washington suit. He looked as uncomfortable in the jacket as he did in the Tomb itself. This was his first visit ever.

“Mr. Sundowner,” the President said, “tell us about Hope Valley.”

Sundowner cleared his throat. He rose from his chair, holding tight to a black remote control device in his hand.

“I believe, sir,” he started, “that the pictures we’re about to see speak for themselves. If they don’t, there’s an accompanying narration that says it better than I can.”

Sundowner pressed one button on the remote and the Tomb’s recessed lights darkened. He pressed another one and the map in the center of the side wall parted to reveal a forty-five-inch video monitor. The device was familiar to him but had been custom-altered for the Tomb, and Sundowner had a vision of pushing the wrong button and sending missiles hurtling from their silos. He pushed a third button and the screen filled with a videotaped flyover shot of what had been Hope Valley.

Nothing but a black cloud. Everywhere, everything, from one side of the screen to the other.

“My God,” the President muttered, rising as if to gain a better view in the darkness of the Tomb, a dimness diffused only by the glow of the video screen and the light over the door.

Sundowner froze the frame. “The military alerted the BSI after being alerted themselves by a highway patrolman who saw the cloud. Thought it was smoke at first.”

“You mean he entered the town?” raised Secretary of Defense Kappel, aware of the possible implications.

“He came close enough. We’ve got him in seclusion now, more to keep him quiet than as an anticontamination precaution. There’s no danger of infection here,” Sundowner explained, pointing at the screen. “I only wish it were that simple.”

The scientist started the tape again. Different angles and views of the cloud were displayed, showing no trace of the town.

“What about the perimeter?” CIA chief Stamp wanted to know.

“Hope Valley’s as isolated as they come,” Sundowner told him. “Just a single main access road which we cordoned off and set the appropriate buffer in place. The military and BSI personnel are working together under Firewatch conditions. That much has been contained.”

“That much,” echoed Mercheson, mimicking the obvious understatement.

There was a brief glitch in the tape after which the screen filled with a moving shot down the road approaching Hope Valley.

“The thickness of the cloud made it impossible for any of our flyovers to tell us anything. Our next phase called for an observer to be sent in. The picture you’re seeing now comes courtesy of a camera built into his helmet. He had to look through the windshield of the van he was driving, so excuse the graininess.”

“Who made the decision to enter?” the President demanded as the murky mass loomed larger on the screen.

“I did, sir,” admitted Sundowner without hesitation.

“Rather large responsibility to take on yourself, considering the potential risks.”

“There was more risk involved, sir, by not investigating the scene itself. We had no idea what evidence might be lost on the wind and I was satisfied by on-scene reports that the biological reactions were of negligible consequence.”

“Meaning?”

“No dizziness, nausea, or wooziness from the soldiers enforcing the five-mile sealing and buffer zone. No symptoms of anything at all. Except fear.”

On the screen, the van had reached the outer borders of the cloud, headlights barely making a dent in the blackness as it crawled on.

“Nevertheless, the driver is wearing a POTMC suit,” Sundowner elaborated. “Stands for Protective Outfit, Toxicological and Microclimate Controlled.”

Sundowner paused long enough to touch a button that brought up the volume on the screen’s hidden speakers. “The driver’s narration begins here, so I’ll let him take over.”

The softly whirling sounds of an engine came on before the voice, words slightly garbled by the Tomb’s echo, forcing the occupants to strain their ears.

“Base, this is Watch One. I’m almost to the edge of town. Whatever’s in this cloud, it’s playing hell with the windshield. As you can see I’ve got the wipers on steady now but they’re not doing much good. A gritty residue full of flakes and dust is building up in layers, so whatever this cloud is it’s got plenty of solid makeup to it. It’s still hard to tell if — wait a minute. Jesus Christ…”

The picture on the screen buckled as the driver jammed on the brakes, seeing something his helmet-contained camera could not yet pick up. Remembering this, he accelerated the vehicle again.

“I’m going to try to rotate my head regularly to make sure everything I’m looking at comes through. I’m entering the town now … or what used to be the town.”

Narration continued and the men in the Tomb sat listening, looking, mesmerized. The tape was shot in color but it might as well not have been; black powder dominated what had been the center of Hope Valley. It lay in piles everywhere, all different sizes, no pattern whatsoever, and it seemed to shift in the wind even as they watched. It was so powdery that the van rolled easily over it. The narrator drew his vehicle to a halt to allow for the clearest possible picture.

“Checking instruments now,” he said and for a time only engine sounds filled the speakers with the camera’s view of the town lost as the driver lowered his helmet. “Instruments show only a slight flux in heat levels. I read no evidence of explosion. Repeat, no evidence of explosion. Whatever caused this wasn’t nuclear or even remotely fulminatory.” Another pause. “Instruments indicate the area of direct effect is cylindrical and, my God, symmetrical.”

“Symmetrical,” broke in Secretary of State Mercheson, “what exactly does that mean?”

Sundowner hit the PAUSE key and the screen froze again. “Any kind of ground-level explosion would spread outward like water spilled on a table. Ragged edges and a generally irregular pattern. Symmetrical means we’re facing an impetus from above ground level.”

“Push the PLAY button, Mr. Sundowner,” Lyman Scott ordered.

The scientist obliged and the narrator’s voice returned, the screen blurring as he lowered his head closer to the instruments.

“I’m checking the range finders now. I read no evidence whatsoever of any remains. Nothing’s even standing. It doesn’t make sense. Whatever happened here should have left residue I could fix on, yet there’s nothing except for that black dust. Sensors show no signs of movement indicative of life. I’m checking oxygen levels now…. Machines say the air’s breathable. They don’t say it’s sooty but I can assure you of that much. I’m going to start driving again.” The screen grew dark once again, and the Tomb’s occupants squinted their eyes trying to see through the sooty cloud. “It’s my estima—”

There was a thud and the picture rocked.

“What the hell …”

“You’re not going to believe this,” the narrator’s voice said as if in reply, “but I just hit another car. I’m getting out to inspect the damage. Better take my lantern. …”

The screen blurred again, then filled briefly with a shot of the driver’s door opening out into the blackness. The narrator’s breathing quickened as his boots met the pavement and he started around to the front of the van with the lantern’s beam focused directly before him.

“What the hell?”

The car he had struck was missing all four of its tires.

“I hope it’s thieves because — wait a minute … I don’t know if you can make this out but I’m looking inside the car and the interior’s just a shell. No trace of cloth or plastic. Long as I’m out, I might as well take a little walk. …”

Sundowner pressed the MUTE key and picked up the narration himself as the helmet-mounted camera looked into the dent carved in the sooty blackness by the powerful lantern.

“Two more cars here,” he started when the screen displayed them, “also missing their tires.”

“Busy thieves,” observed Stamp.

Sundowner’s words rolled over him. “Here we have a pile of bricks where a building once was.”

“Looks like it just crumbled in on itself,” said Kappel. “No semblance of structure, just like the instruments recorded.”

“There’s no trace of most other buildings at all,” continued Sundowner when the camera locked on what had been one. “Just holes in the ground filled with that black dust.”

“What about people?” the President wanted to know.

“None.”

“I was talking about traces, remains.”

“None,” Sundowner said without elaborating further. He hit the MUTE key and the narrator’s voice picked up again as he headed back for the van.

“… now. I’ve got the layout of Hope Valley memorized and I want to check out the residential neighborhoods. …”

Sundowner fastforwarded, watching the counter for the proper cue when to stop.

“I’m in what used to be a neighborhood. It’s the same as the commercial district — nothing left. But hold on. In the detailed maps I studied before entering there were plenty of trees and grass.” He cocked his head to the left and held it. “There was a park over there, I’m sure of it. But now, as you can see, there’s nothing but black dust. Looks like the stuff just swooped in and swallowed everything. …”

The foundations of several houses were still visible, but nothing rested on top of them. There was just the black dust, rising up from the excavations and whipping about in the stiff wind. The scene looked to be that of a distant planet with a violent, unsettled landscape unfit for habitation. No plants, buildings, or life. Not even any death.

“What about the people, goddamnit!” the President blared suddenly. “What happened to the people?”

Sundowner pressed STOP. “They were attacked, sir.”

The President leaned over the table, the fear in his face caught by the glow coming off the screen. “You had better be prepared to explain yourself, Mr. Sundowner.”

“I’m not, Mr. President, and I’m not sure I ever will be able to do so satisfactorily, because what happened to Hope Valley can’t be explained.”

Lyman Scott moved back into the darkness, safe from the screen’s light. “Your report indicates otherwise. You said symmetrical. You said attacked. But there’s no weapon on this planet that could bring about what we just witnessed.”

“You mean, sir, there didn’t used to be.”

Chapter 3

Blaine McCracken watched the Hind-D being wheeled down the ramp from the cargo bay of the C-130 transport plane that had flown it to the Air Force test lab in Colorado Springs.

“You’re late,” Lieutenant Colonel Ben Metcalf barked cheerfully, striding across the airfield toward him.

“Next time call Federal Express. They’re the only ones who’ll absolutely, positively do business with bastards like you.”

The two men met at the foot of the ramp and shook hands firmly. Metcalf’s eyes fell fondly on the Hind.

“I can’t tell you what it means to us to finally get our hands on one of these.”

“Forget the plural,” Blaine scolded. “I did this for you, Ben, you and you only. For services rendered, remember?” Fifteen years ago, Metcalf had run interference for Blaine with the brass back in Vietnam so that Blaine’s unit could cut through enemy lines instead of red tape.

“But in this case there’s the matter of the million-dollar bounty on this bird. That money now officially belongs to you.”

“Except I don’t plan on claiming it, not when it’ll probably mean having my picture plastered across the cover of some half-assed war-lover’s magazine.”

“Would probably boost circulation a bundle to showcase that beautiful mug of yours.”

“Yeah. People’d have to buy a copy to find out if I was human or not. If anyone asks, just tell them you inherited the Hind after it was left in a tow zone.”

They started walking down the tarmac.

“You still think about the war, Blaine?”

“Never stopped. Johnny says I’m obsessed with bringing things to a finish. Maybe in this case it’s because over there we never finished anything; we never really knew we started.” Blaine gazed at the Hind as it was towed toward a hangar. “You gonna keep her here awhile?”

“Couple months at least. I’m going to take care of the flight testing myself, just as soon as I patch up the holes you put in her.”

“Wouldn’t mind sticking around for that myself.”

“You’re more than welcome to but there’s a message waiting for you in my office. From a woman.”

“And I told her never to call me at the office….”

Metcalf laughed briefly. “Figured you’d be a harder man to track down.”

“Somebody needs me, it’s not that hard. That’s the way I want it.”

“Message said it was important. No name, just a number. Massachusetts exchange, I think.”

“Terry Catherine Hayes,” Blaine said, mostly to himself.

“Know her?”

“I used to.”

Ben Metcalf insisted on flying Blaine across the country in an Air Force jet. McCracken sat in the cockpit and tried to remember what piloting a jet was like.

And what Terry Catherine might be like now. They hadn’t seen each other in over eight years, almost nine, after a brief and intense romantic interlude that had been Blaine’s last. It had been quite an item for a month at least. The daughter of a rich Bostonian banker taking up with a mysterious government agent no queries could find any record of. They had met at a cocktail party when Blaine deliberately mistook her for the woman he was there to protect.

T.C…. He was the only one who called her that, and she pretended to hate it for those weeks McCracken had shared with her, shared more than he had with most women. Sustained attachments were impossible in Blaine’s chosen profession. Too easy for the woman to be hurt or used as leverage by an opponent seeking any possible advantage. And just as dangerous, attachments could provide too seductive a picture of what the other side of life was like. Normalcy, settling down, living under your real name and without the fear that anyone’s eyes you met might belong to a person about to kill you.

In this case, though, it hadn’t been McCracken who had broken things off, it had been Terry Catherine. He hadn’t told her much about himself but it was enough to let her know the commitment might last only until the next phone call. T.C. chose to accept the pain on her own terms. She was just twenty-two then, a kid fresh out of Brown University with the whole world before her. McCracken, three months past thirty, knew what the world was really like. Vietnam had interrupted college for him after just one year and he had never gone back. His life was made for him in what Johnny Wareagle called the hellfire, such events as the Phoenix project and the Tet Offensive.

The emotional hellfire came when T.C. broke things off. He probably would have done so himself before too much longer but understanding the strength it had required for her to do it made him love her more. It was impossible for him to forget her. He wanted her so much more once it was certain that he couldn’t have her.

They hadn’t as much as spoken in the eight-and-a-half years since parting, which was all the more reason to believe that something in T.C.’s life must be desperately wrong for her to seek him out. He tried to tell himself the fire of her youth’s beauty would be long gone, but he was destined to be surprised by her yet again.

Their meeting that night was set for the Plaza Bar in Boston’s Copley Plaza Hotel, not far from Terry Catherine’s Back Bay townhouse. The Plaza Bar was located off the hotel’s lobby, on the right of the main entrance. On most nights it featured the nimble piano work of the famed Dave McKenna, his fingers sliding across ivory in the bar’s back right corner. Blaine entered through the handcarved archway just as the last chords of a McKenna favorite were greeted by applause. The ceilings were high, and the fresh smell of leather couches and low armchairs mingled with cigarette smoke and perfume. He scanned the room for T.C., but she wasn’t at any of the nearby tables. He headed for the far wall, where more tables were secluded behind a Japanese screen. As he approached, she stepped out to meet him.

She was undoubtedly the most beautiful woman in the bar. Her figure had remained tall and lean. She wore only traces of makeup and a dress that highlighted her model’s body. There was nothing pretentious about her appearance. Blaine immediately felt all the old attraction he had tried to forget. She stood there uneasily, her smile slight and nervous, and Blaine knew more was behind the tension than simply their reunion.

He kissed her lightly on the lips, let his squeeze of her hand linger.

“You promised me you’d stay beautiful,” he said through the lump in his throat. “And you have.”

“Still working the old charm, eh McCracken?”

“Some things don’t change, T.C.”

“Been a long time since anyone called me that. I still hate it.”

“Well, Terry Catherine, that’s why I say it.”

“I see time hasn’t mellowed you in the least. As I always used to tell you, if God had meant us to use initials, he wouldn’t have bothered with names in the first place.”

Blaine let go of her hand and together they walked to her table, set back against the wall where there was nothing to disturb their privacy. Through a nearby window they could see people passing on the sidewalk outside.

“I do plenty of things God probably never meant,” he told her when they were seated.

“And I understand one of those colorful escapades,” she followed without missing a beat, “earned you the title of McCrackenballs. I was offended when I heard about it. They could have come to me for a reference.”

“Your memory that good?”

“Some things you don’t forget.”

“That ring I felt on your finger means you forgot one promise you made to yourself.”

She nodded emotionlessly. “An unfortunate misstep. Lasted three years. The divorce was a much happier day than the wedding. I keep the ring as a reminder to avoid similar missteps in the future.”

“Why bother making one?”

She didn’t answer him right away, and that gave Blaine a chance to gaze into her eyes. She really was beautiful, even more so now than eight years ago. The little her face had aged made it seem fuller, less dominated by the high cheekbones she had always been sensitive about. She wore her hair shorter now, shaggy, neither in fashion nor out — just her.

“Because I was scared,” she said finally. “Twenty-seven years old, all dressed up, and nowhere to go. I panicked. Promised myself I’d say yes to the next man who popped the question. Could’ve been worse. It could have been you, McCracken.”

Blaine winked. “Anything but that.”

“Anyway, I’m now determined to die single.”

“But not a virgin.”

“Thanks to you.”

“If I was the first, I’ll eat your mattress cover.”

“You were the first that mattered, the first who wasn’t a juvenile, or who didn’t come ready packaged from my family, or who wasn’t a horny Brown undergrad. It’s the same thing.”

A waitress came and T.C. ordered a glass of wine by name and vintage. McCracken said he’d take the same.

“Red and white,” he noted with a shrug. “All just colors to me.”

“A man in your position really should pay more attention to such things, McCracken.”

“A man in my position shouldn’t be drinking at all. You should see me. I’m really good at swirling the contents of a glass around so no one can tell I’m not drinking it.”

“The wine you just ordered is twenty dollars a glass.”

“I’ll swirl slower.”

She laughed and looked at ease for the first time. “You’re a hard man to keep track of.”

“You found me.”

“I never stopped keeping tabs, you know. I know all about your trouble in England and your subsequent banishment to the office pool in France. Learning of your resurrection was second only to my divorce as the best day ever.”

“But you didn’t call until now.”

The waitress came with their drinks, saving T.C. the trouble of responding right away. She sipped. McCracken swirled.

“I thought it would be much harder to reach you.”

“I make sure it isn’t for people who know me. It’s what I’m doing these days — paying back old debts, settling scores. Makes me feel I’m worth something.”

“Doing favors for friends …”

“Something like that. The freedom’s priceless. I’ve sworn off Washington. But, of course, you’d know that.”

“I heard.”

“How’s Back Bay?”

“Crumbling. Water table rose and the townhouse is sinking. Literally. It’s cost me more in repairs than what my parents paid for it.” She paused. “I found a phone number for you, but no address.”

“Got six of them — apartments. Two don’t even have any furniture, but they’re scattered conveniently all over the country. What I really want is to own a car. You know I’ve never really had my own. Pretty incredible for a man of my advanced years.”

T.C. sipped some of the wine, and the goblet trembled in her hand. Blaine grasped her other one in his.

“What’s wrong, T.C.?”

“I hate asking you for something, after so long I mean.”

“Favors for friends, remember?”

She placed the wine goblet on the table. “It’s my grandfather. He’s … in danger.”

“Cotter Hayes? You’re kidding.”

“Not Cotter Hayes. My grandfather on my mother’s side.” She paused. “Erich Earnst.”

“Hmmmmmm, not your average Boston yankee name.”

“Anything but. German Jewish. World War II specifically. An escapee from Sobibor.”

“If the gossip columnists could hear you now….”

“It’s one of Boston’s best-kept secrets, I assure you.” Another piano rendition by Dave McKenna ended, and T.C. waited for the applause to die down before continuing. “That Rawley Hayes would consent to marry a woman of Jewish persuasion … well, fortunately the truth never came out. Might have ruined him if it had.” A sad smile crossed her lips. “Truth was, though, that Grandpa Erich was always infinitely more fun and interesting than Grandpa Cotter, especially when I grew old enough to appreciate him and all he’d been through.”

“But now you’re saying he’s in danger.”

“Because he says so. And I believe him. It’s all very recent. The police don’t buy it — nothing to go on. I … didn’t know where else to turn.”

McCracken swirled his wine some more. “I need to hear the specifics.”

“There aren’t many, Blaine; that’s the problem. He’s certain he’s being followed. He should know, after all he’s been through.” Her mind strayed. “My mother’s not really Jewish. Grandpa Erich found her wandering the streets of Poland and brought her to America with him and his wife. Never forced their religion on her because they didn’t want her subjected to the persecution they had undergone. But, in addition to bringing my mother over, he also brought along a sack of diamonds the size of a tote bag. His gem parlor is still one of the best in Manhattan. The money made his daughter enough of a somebody for my father to take notice of her.”

“You sound bitter.”

“I hate pretenses; you know that.”

“All too well. And that’s why if you believe your grandfather, I believe you.” The relief on her face was obvious. Her need for the wine seemed to evaporate, and she too, began swirling her glass.

“Trouble is I’m not exactly sure what I can do about it, T.C. This isn’t exactly the kind of work I specialize in.”

“You could talk to him.”

“Which I’m sure you’ve done already. You’re a sensible person. Is there anything he says I can make use of?”

“You’ll ask the right questions. You always do.”

“Except once. Might have saved you the bother of that divorce otherwise.”

She shook her head sadly. “It would have happened anyway, Blaine, probably well before the three years were out, and that day would have been a bad one instead of a good one.”

“In a twisted sense, I suppose that’s a compliment.”

“Not so twisted.”

Blaine put his hand over hers. “Call your grandfather. Tell him I’m coming to talk to him.”

She smiled. “I already did. He’s expecting you tomorrow morning at his gem parlor in the diamond district.”

“You know me too well, T.C.”

“Some things don’t change.”

“Did you also mean to leave us the night?”

She hedged. “The morning was his idea, not mine.”

“Then I suppose—”

“Dinner, Blaine. Some more of this wine probably; I’ll drink while you swirl. That’ll be as far as it goes, but it’ll be plenty far for me because just having you here means enough. I don’t want to spoil it. I want to hold it just the way it is.”

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

Chapter 4

“Is your report ready, Mr. Sundowner?”

When the scientist answered, his voice was hoarse with fatigue. In the past eighteen hours there had been time only for a quick change of clothes. Once again, the Tomb felt large and devastatingly empty to him. As he spoke, he was distracted by the echo of his own words.

“I’m not sure it will ever be totally complete, sir,” he told the President, “at least not in the foreseeable future. To be honest, I know no more than I did yesterday; I’ve just confirmed my original feelings.”

The other men in the room — Kappel, Stamp, Mercheson, and Lyman Scott himself — stared at him with laymen’s confusion and disdain.

“Then get on with it,” urged the President.

Sundowner didn’t know where to start. Or rather, he did — and that was the problem.

“It all comes down to the symmetry of the destroyed radius. I’ll spare you the explanatory details. Suffice it to say that the town of Hope Valley was destroyed by a hostile action in the form of a particle-beam weapon fired from between ten to twenty thousand feet above the Earth’s surface.”

“Beam weapon?” raised Secretary of Defense George Kappel. “You mean like a laser?”

“Not at all. Lasers fire focused beams of energy. A particle beam fires matter, subatomic particles accelerated to the speed of light. The mass of these particles increases with speed, and the energy produced goes up by the square.”

“In English please, Ryan,” requested the President.

Sundowner sighed. “An ordinary television set is actually a particle-beam generator which utilizes a gun to shoot particles in the form of electrons through two magnets. Presto! You’ve got a picture, the density of which is directly related to the concentration of particles fired from the set’s gun. If it was too dense, the beam would obliterate the screen and everything in front of it. Now picture that on a much larger scale with a gun firing particles other than electrons. On the subatomic level almost anything is possible.”

“As yesterday would seem to attest to,” advanced Secretary of State Edmund Mercheson. “But how could this beam we’re facing leave no trace whatsoever of people’s remains, wood, plants, trees, grass, even rubber and cloth?”

“Organic matter,” Sundowner stated flatly, rotating his stare from one to the other. “The subatomic particles break up organic matter.”

“Speak plainly,” ordered Lyman Scott.

Sundowner swallowed some air hoping the dull fear rising in him would slide down with it. “All life on Earth is based on the carbon atom. The subatomic particles composing the Hope Valley beam have the capacity to destroy the glue which holds that atom together. It breaks down the carbon chains into their basic elements. Separates the oxygen from the hydrogen on a molecular level which reduces organic matter to black carbon dust.”

“The cloud,” realized the President.

Sundowner nodded. “I had my suspicions after viewing the tape the very first time. But I wanted to put off my report until I had time to examine the evidence further — what did survive, as well as what didn’t. Steel, brick, and all other forms of inorganic matter in the town were themselves unaffected by the beam. Buildings composed of these materials collapsed, but only because the bonds holding the inorganic materials in place were carbon-based.”

Lyman Scott felt his lips trembling and fought to still them. “What exactly would be needed to generate such a beam?”

“Two things, essentially. One, the discovery of a subatomic particle that disrupts the carbon chain. Two, a power source capable of focusing those particles into a beam on the level that wiped out Hope Valley. Without the second discovery, the first is useless in terms of a large-scale weapon.”

“The ultimate weapon,” Lyman Scott muttered. “Quick and absolute destruction.”

“Not as absolute as it might have been,” continued Sundowner. “The death ray traveled across Hope Valley from west to east in a beam three miles across, starting roughly at one border of the town and finishing at the other.”

“Are you saying, Mr. Sundowner,” raised Secretary of State Mercheson, “that the beam could just as easily have drawn a line of destruction straight across the entire country?”

“Theoretically, yes.”

“Satellite delivery, then,” from Kappel.

“Whose satellite?” the President demanded. “Whose weapon? Somebody has it, and for some reason they wanted to demonstrate its potency to us without letting us know who they are.”

CIA chief Stamp leaned forward, almost reluctantly. “I may have a lead, sir. Just past midnight Saturday, six hours before the destruction of Hope Valley, our Turkish station received a message on a closed channel warning that an American town was going to be … destroyed.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this yesterday?”

“The message was only just relayed to me. Our Turkish station delayed transmission because, as I said, the channel was closed. Should have been inactive and had been for months. Our security had been penetrated, forcing us to reroute.”

“Get to the point.”

“It was a Soviet penetration.”

A few long moments of silence passed before Secretary of Defense Kappel’s voice sliced through the Tomb’s heavy air. “Wait a minute,” he shot out, “are you telling me that the Russians have a weapon that can melt people where they stand?”

“Not at all,” said the man from the CIA. “But the fact remains they were the only ones who knew about the Turkish channel.”

“Mr. President,” began Edmund Mercheson in a typically droll, Kissinger-like tone, “a single instance of penetration of a single channel is hardly sufficient basis to adopt an accusatory posture. My feeling is we are more likely facing an enemy seeking to utilize this penetration to make us think the Soviets are behind everything, so as to severely limit our field of responses.”

“We’re severely limited in any case,” noted the President grimly.

“But we have one option clearly open to us,” Kappel followed almost before Lyman Scott had finished speaking. “I’d advise bumping DEF-CON status up to two, three at the very least. We’ve been attacked.”

“But,” argued Mercheson, “DEF-CON functions as a signal to no one else but the Soviets. It insinuates escalation, a tough atmosphere in which to initiate dialogue.”

“I’d submit we’re already past that.”

“Which may well be exactly what the true wielder of this particle beam wants,” said the man from State.

“I’m inclined to see Ed’s side of things,” broke in Lyman Scott. “No offense, George,” he added, as if afraid of offending one of the last men whose trust he enjoyed. “But I can’t see the point of the Soviets advertising the existence of such a superweapon and warning us in advance through such roundabout means. Even stranger, utilizing a weapon in this manner would seem to me to negate its ultimate purpose. If they’ve got and plan to use it, why not just draw the line all the way across the country? Why stop at Hope Valley?”

“Your point’s well taken, sir,” agreed Sundowner. “And the answer may lie in the reasons why we abandoned research aimed at developing this sort of weapon. The scientific limitations presented us were insurmountable….”

“But apparently overcome by somebody,” shot out Kappel.

“Maybe not,” Sundowner continued. “There might be a very good reason why their deployment didn’t extend beyond Hope Valley and why they bothered to warn us in the first place. The power source required to generate a beam of this nature is immense. Maybe they’re only capable of effecting it on a small scale, so they risked a contained open demonstration complete with warning to make us think otherwise.”

“Yes,” echoed Mercheson. “We’ve heard from them once. Under that scenario they’ve set us up to hear from them again, fully convinced of the efficacy of their threat.”

“Blackmail,” realized Lyman Scott. “Hope Valley employed to hold us hostage to some sort of demands.”

“And, Soviet or not,” began Stamp, “they would certainly be well aware of the problems facing Washington at present. We’re vulnerable, and our response is limited by that vulnerability.”

“Words well chosen,” said the President, “but too minced. A nice gesture, Willie, but we’re all friends here. This administration isn’t just vulnerable, it’s under siege from all sides. We’re not just lame ducks, we’re sitting ducks for our enemies at home as well as abroad. Might be some, a few who once occupied these empty chairs, who’d welcome the whole business to finish the job of bringing us down.”

“The Soviets would like nothing better,” reminded George Kappel. “It’s possible they’ve used this means to manufacture a crisis, destroy us from the inside without ever having to use their weapon again. Screens and inconsistencies thrown up in our path to force us to go in circles. They know our grip is tenuous. If we handle this situation poorly, we could face collapse.”

“Gentlemen,” said the President strongly, “if this government is out of control, I’ll accept responsibility. But I won’t, can’t, sit here and admit we’ve lost.”

“That’s not what I was saying, sir,” insisted Kappel.

“But it comes down to that, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe we should hope it does,” put forth Sundowner suddenly, “because under that scenario we would at least be granted time to formulate a response. If we could negate the weapon, we can negate the threat.”

“Ever so simple, assuming we had such a response.”

“I believe we do, potentially anyway: Bugzapper.”

“I thought we had determined its activation to be technologically infeasible,” said Kappel after a brief pause.

“Not anymore,” the scientist told him.

Upon taking over as head of the Toy Factory four years before, Sundowner had inherited the remains of the Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as the Star Wars system. Problems both financial and technological had already stripped the program bare. What had originally been envisioned as a seven-layer defensive shield against all incoming missile attacks had been peeled away one layer at a time until all that remained was a ground-based laser system which utilized mirrors in space and had tested out as being woefully inadequate against anything but a small-scale strike — hardly a layer at all.

For years Sundowner had maintained his own theories and finally had the chance to set them to work. He called his program “Bugzapper” after those deadly bright lights that fry any insect that wanders too close. His system functioned on the same general basis. Sundowner envisioned a fleet of three or four dozen satellites poised in geosynchronistic orbits over the United States, attached to each other by invisible energy fields. Any object that attempted to penetrate such a field would suffer the same fate that awaited the nagging mosquito on a summer evening. In effect, an impenetrable shield would be erected over the nation, rendering it invincible to any major attack — a shield without the complexities of Star Wars.

“The major problem with Bugzapper from the beginning,” Sundowner was saying, “was that for the shield to be effective, the energy fields erected between the various satellites had to be constantly active. The power drain would thus be enormous. And since the satellites would have to possess the capacity to recharge themselves in outer space, solar energy was the only possibility. But it was impossible until recently to find a sufficient power storage capability.”

“Don’t tell me,” quipped George Kappel. “You’ve discovered a way to lay cable connecting your satellites with the sun itself.”

“Not exactly,” said Sundowner, “but close enough.”

The red phone buzzed twice and the President leaned forward over the table and lifted the receiver.

“Yes?” he said, holding it to his ear. His lower lip dropped as he listened attentively, his face seeming to grow progressively paler. “And that’s it?” he asked at the end. “I see…. No, we’ll handle it from here…. Yes, tell them to keep monitoring.” Lyman Scott turned to the men before him, still clutching the receiver to his ear. “We’ve been contacted in Turkey again; same channel, same code.”

“Sir?” one of them raised, speaking for all, hoping to learn the contents of the communiqué just received.

But the President simply looked toward Sundowner. “Lay your cable, Ryan. And lay it fast.”

The two figures sat alone in the rearmost row of the Bangkok movie house, the light cast by the celluloid images barely reaching them.

“I am instructed to require your name and status before any further discussion can take place,” said the smaller of the two.

“My name is Katlov and my status is renegade,” said the other softly, turning enough so a patch over his left eye was visible in the darkness. The rest of his features were indistinguishable.

“Strange for a renegade to seek out a KGB station chief.”

On the screen an American western, dubbed in Thai, was nearing its climax.

“To me you are simply a messenger, Station Chief.”

The KGB man grunted. “I am a busy man.”

“And a small one.”

“Get to the point.”

“You will deliver a message for me to Moscow.”

“Really?”

“You will tell them that I can give them Raskowski.”

The KGB man’s mouth dropped.

“You will tell them I have no time for games or delays. The world has no time. I will meet their emissary here.”

“This is my station,” the KGB man said defensively.

“There are terms you will not be able to meet.”

“But—”

“I won’t have this!” Katlov snapped. “I will give you the key we used for the Turkish channel. That will be all the proof they require. It will show I am what I claim to be.”

“I know nothing of such a channel’s significance.”

“They will know, you fool! You will relay to them my instructions. You will stress the importance of immediate action and that I alone hold the means to end this madness.”

“What madness?” the station chief asked, pensive now.

Katlov made a motion to rise. The KGB man restrained him gently.

“Please. I’ll … do as you say.”

Katlov settled back in his chair.

Chapter 5

New York’s famed diamond district occupies only one block, West 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. From across the street, at first glance, Earnst’s Gem Parlor looked small and unassuming, its narrow shape squeezed between a pair of larger and more openly aggressive merchants. But at second glance, McCracken reckoned from his position fronting the jar-filled window of Kaplan’s Delicatessen, it stood a cut above the others in class as well as clientele. The fact that it need not stack its front windows with rows of diamonds revealed this, as did a front entrance cubicle complete with armed guard.

McCracken and T.C. had taken Eastern’s nine A.M. shuttle from Boston. She had insisted on accompanying him and he had reluctantly agreed only after she promised to do nothing but remain in her room at the Waldorf and wait for his call. The cab dropped them both off at the hotel, and Blaine walked the short distance to Earnst’s.

He should have used the opportunity to check for tails but he was distracted by thoughts still lingering from the night before. T.C. had left him at the Copley Plaza just past one A.M. but called as soon as she got back to her crumbling townhouse, and they talked for another hour. Blaine didn’t know which he regretted more: the fact that she wasn’t lying beside him then or that she had broken off their relationship all those years before. He slept fitfully, dreaming of her, and hating it once he awoke because only in dreams could he bring her as near to him as he wished.

With those thoughts chasing him again, Blaine dashed across the street through westbound traffic. Seventy West 47th was embroidered in plated gold over the entrance. McCracken stepped through the first door and faced the uniformed security officer squeezed behind a counter.

“Good morning, sir,” the guard said cheerfully. “I’ll need an I.D. card to hold while you’re inside.”

Blaine produced one of his many driver’s licenses and handed it over. The guard fumbled beneath his counter, finally locating the entry button. There was an ear-scratching buzz, and Blaine watched the inner glass door snap electronically open. He passed inside and found himself within the long, narrow, and elegantly appointed confines of Earnst’s. A crystal chandelier cast shimmering light over the whole quiet scene, reflecting off the many glass counters and display cases. Instead of standard stools behind the various counters, Earnst’s were covered in rich velour that matched the color of the carpeting.

McCracken ambled past a series of display cases and was surprised not to see any hidden wires strung through the glass. Then he realized that it was not here but on the upper levels of the store that gems of greater value were kept and traded. Access to these was limited, and strictly by appointment.

“Can I help you?” a clerk asked him as he stood before a case layered with diamond sapphire necklaces.

“I’m here to see Mr. Earnst. He’s expecting me. Tell him it’s Blaine McCracken.”

“One moment.”

The clerk turned and disappeared up a set of stairs situated behind one of the counters. A minute later he returned with an older man by his side.

Erich Earnst must have been closer to eighty than seventy. His thinning white hair was wild, and his flesh was grayish. He walked with a slight limp. Blaine moved forward to greet him.

“Mr. McCracken,” the old man said gratefully, extending his hand. “I’m so glad you’ve come. Please, let’s go upstairs.”

Blaine freed himself from the old man’s surprisingly strong handshake, aware that the rapid shifting of Earnst’s eyes was due more to fear than age. T.C. had said her grandfather was in danger and that was good enough for him. Given the vast sums Earnst dealt with every day, anything was possible. Blaine owed it to T.C. to follow every lead.

“We’ll talk in my office,” Erich Earnst said as they moved behind the counter to the staircase he had just descended.

Blaine followed the older man up the stairs. At the top they had to turn right and directly before them rose a high security steel-and-glass door. Earnst slid an electronic entry card into a slot and the door snapped open.

Obviously in a hurry now, Earnst stepped through and made sure the door caught behind them.

“This way,” he beckoned, and Blaine moved with him down the hall into a beautiful office, furnished in the same colors as the display area downstairs. The old man closed the door and limped to his desk.

“My granddaughter has told me quite a lot about you, Mr. McCracken,” he said. “Please sit down. Excuse me for being so nervous, but I haven’t slept well in a month now.”

Blaine sat down opposite Earnst in one of a pair of red velvet chairs facing the neat desk.

“A month ago,” McCracken noted. “Was that when it started?”

“Yes. The feeling of being watched is well known to me. You develop a sense for such things when you spend years running for your life.”’

“I can understand that. It’s why I’m here.”

“The others didn’t believe. The police … ach. I tell them and they listen, but they think I’m crazy.”

McCracken leaned forward. “Mr. Earnst, you said you were being watched. Does that mean followed as well?”

“No. I don’t go anywhere, so there would be no reason to follow me. I come here and I go home. Nothing else. I’m watched all day long. Nights sometimes, too.”

“And it started one month ago.”

“Yes.”

“Does anything else about that time stand out in your mind?”

Earnst didn’t have to think. “No. The robbery had happened two weeks earlier.”

“T.C. didn’t mention anything about a robbery.”

“I’m not sure I mentioned it to her. There was nothing worth worrying her about. Only a few items were taken.”

“Specifically?”

“Ruby-red crystals sent to me by a supplier in Greece.”

“Rubies?”

“Only in color. I’d never seen anything like them. I thought they might be quite valuable and agreed to take them on consignment.” The old man’s stare turned distant. “Strange crystals they were, jagged and irregular. Unfinished. There was only one customer who showed any interest in them at all. Why is this important?”

“I’m not sure yet. Tell me about this customer.”

Earnst pushed himself up from the chair and limped behind his desk where he extracted an appointment book from the top drawer. Flipping through it, he quickly came upon the day in question.

“Lydia Brandywine made me show her all five of the crystals. Said she was searching for something exotic and totally different. I showed her plenty of gems that afternoon, I remember now, but the crystals were the only items that interested her. She made an appointment to choose a setting but the crystals were stolen a few days later.”

“Just the crystals?”

“Because of their potential as one-of-a-kinds, I kept them in a separate place.” The old man shook his head. “My security was antiquated. The door we passed through was added after the robbery. My first, you know, in all these years.”

“And ten days or so after that you started feeling you were being watched.”

“Yes.”

“I’ll need Lydia Brandywine’s address.”

Earnst jotted it down in a large scrawl and handed it over. “Why bother?” he wanted to know.

“Because I don’t believe in coincidence. I want to follow these crystals and see where they lead, so I’ll speak with Mrs. Brandywine. If I get nowhere, I’ll start over somewhere else.”

That set Earnst thinking as he sat back down. “It’s strange.”

“What is?”

“The man who supplied me with the crystals requested their return shortly after the robbery. He sounded quite agitated, even frightened, when I told him they had been stolen.”

“Tell me about him.”

“He’s a Greek named Kapo Stadipopolis. He’s a prime dealer in artifacts and gems sometimes obtained through shady means. All merchants depend on the black market from time to time, including me.”

“That’s not the issue here, Mr. Earnst. Your safety is.”

“Stadipopolis has a shop in Athens, on Monastiraki Square. He’s good at what he does, seldom makes a mistake. But he claimed he shipped me the crystals by accident. Said he needed them back desperately.”

“In your mind, what were they worth?”

“Whatever the market would bear for one-of-a-kind items. Believe me when I tell you, Mr. McCracken, that I had never seen anything quite like them before. A woman like Lydia Brandywine, well, there’s no telling how high she might have gone for something no one else had.”

“She was no stranger to you then.”

“Hardly. All the merchants know her. She is always in search of the unusual.”

“So the crystals were worth stealing.”

“Even more so because they were untraceable. Once remade and refined into stones for setting, they wouldn’t even resemble what I obtained from Greece.” Earnst looked impatient. “I still don’t see what this has to do with my being watched.”

“T.C. also said you felt your life was in danger.”

“An old man’s exaggeration.”

“Really?”

“I’m … not sure.” He hesitated, groping for the words to express what he felt. “I can feel them out there waiting; for what, I don’t know. A few times I walk to work, and I see faces I shouldn’t recognize but do. My apartment building has a new doorman — all of a sudden. The guard service sends a new man to watch the—”

The intercom on Earnst’s desk buzzed. “Yes?” the old man said into it.

“Mr. Obermeyer’s man is here with the delivery, sir,” a clerk’s voice came back.

“Hmmmmm, early. Send him up.” Then, to McCracken as he started for the door, “Forgive the interruption.”

But Blaine reached out and restrained him by the arm, his mind working in another direction. “The fact that he was early bothered you….”

“Yes, but—”

“It’s not the routine. How early, damnit, how early?”

“An hour, perhaps two.”

“And who would check his papers?”

“The guard at the main entrance, of course.”

“The one your security service replaced,” McCracken said softly, recalling the man’s difficulty in finding the button beneath his desk.

Earnst nodded slowly, fear filling his eyes as he realized the same thing McCracken already had.

“What do we do? What do we do? They’ve come! Oh God, they’ve finally come!”

“They’ve done us a favor, Mr. Earnst, because they don’t know I’m here, and even if they did they couldn’t know who I am. What’s the procedure?”

“A clerk will escort the delivery man to the security door.”

“And then?”

“I open it and let them in.”

“Follow the procedure.”

“But—”

“Trust me, Mr. Earnst. I’ll be right behind you all the way. But we’ve got to move now. Quickly!”

McCracken crouched low as soon as he was back in the corridor, and moved quickly to the security door so he couldn’t be seen through the window two-thirds of the way up. When the old man was five yards away from the door, a face appeared against the glass.

“My clerk,” Earnst said to McCracken who was now poised low against the wall adjacent to the door, so that when it opened it would obscure him.

Blaine motioned him to open the door, whispering, “Move toward me quick as you can when it gives.”

Earnst punched a coded sequence into a keypad. The door snapped open and began to move inward.

The rest unfolded too fast for the old man’s eyes to follow, but McCracken grasped it all. The clerk’s frame shoved against the door and through it into the hallway with a large man behind him. There was a fssssssst and the clerk went down. Blaine noted the strange-looking pistol in the man’s hand and sprang into action.

The man was going for Earnst, bringing the pistol up again, never seeing McCracken until he was upon him. Blaine used the man’s weapon against him, turned it back into his gut and jammed the trigger. A second fsssssssst split the air and the man stiffened immediately.

“My God,” muttered a trembling Earnst.

“Just tranquilizers,” McCracken explained, jamming the strange pistol into his pocket and sealing the door again. “Whoever it is must have wanted you alive.” He grabbed the old man and led him back down the corridor. “But now we’ve changed the rules on them, which might change their plans. They still want you and there’ll be more of them, the guard downstairs for instance. Is there another way out of the building from this level?”

Earnst nodded fearfully. “My private elevator connects with a common exit for mine and four other stores.”

“Fine. Your office first and then we’ll make use of it.”

They reached Earnst’s office. Blaine eased the old man inside and steered him toward a display case set against the wall. It was filled with small, unfinished diamonds.

“Grab as many of those as you can.”

“What?”

“T.C. sent me here to keep you safe and alive and that’s what I plan on doing.”

The old man moved to the case and drained a measure of its contents into a small black jewelry box. “But the diamonds, why?”

“Insurance,” Blaine replied and led the way back into the corridor, eyes peeled toward the security door. “They want you alive. We can make that work for us.”

The elevator was located at the opposite end of the hallway from the door. Earnst could barely fit his security key in the special slot to activate it. McCracken helped him and eased the old man in first.

Blaine drew his gun and had moved ahead to shield Earnst by the time the doors slid open again. The lobby before them was empty. McCracken wasted no time, grasping the old man gently once more.

“Let’s go.”

Blaine led him forward toward a set of glass doors which opened out onto 47th. He held the gun low by his hip, partially hidden by his sports jacket. Earnst gripped the jewelry box with both hands to his chest as he moved behind Blaine out the door and into the street.

“Stay by my side,” McCracken whispered and swung right, walking east.

West 47th was a snarl of pedestrians and vehicles. With the city clogged by the lunchtime rush, packs of humanity squeezed past each other, spilling into the street to merge with the gridlocked traffic. Horns blared. Tires went through a series of crazed stops and starts.

Blaine led Earnst on, moving with the flow of the crowd. A chill crept up his spine, warning him to beware of adversaries closing in even now, searching them out — but from where?

Up ahead the reason for the traffic tie-up became clear. A moving truck had wedged itself into an impossible position across the street. The slightest acceleration would crumple a car on one side of it or the other. Several individuals were helping the driver with his delicate maneuvers. Blaine slowed.

“What’s wrong?” Earnst wondered.

“That truck up there, I don’t like it.”

“How can you tell? How can you know?”

Blaine’s response was to grasp the old man’s arm at the elbow to urge him to go faster. The gnawing feeling of an attack soon to come was tight in his stomach. Yet from where would it come? Who might the assailants be, if there were any here at all? Everywhere he turned another shoulder brushed his own. Too many to be sure of anything. But as long as they wanted Earnst alive, he—

Through the cool spring air, Blaine caught a sound. It was faint but terrifyingly distinct: the clang of a machine pistol bolt being yanked back followed by a sudden click.

Alive, damnit, you’re supposed to want him alive!

From tranquilizers to real bullets. Something had changed. The drawing-back of the bolts meant the gunmen had spotted them and were closing even now.

Wait! The crowd! There was a way he could make use of it!

They were halfway to Fifth Avenue now. Just ahead a temporary scaffolding was in place for construction on the upper floors of a building.

“Open your box of diamonds,” McCracken whispered to Earnst.

“What?”

“Just do as I say. And when I tell you, fling the contents up in the air.”

The old man gawked in disbelief. “Are you crazy? Millions of dollars, you’re talking about. Millions!”

“Still not worth your life. There’s no time. They’ve got us. This is our only chance. When the excitement starts, mix with the crowd and disappear. You’ve done it before. You can do it again.”

“The killers will still chase you.”

“That’s the idea.”

Somewhere behind him, Blaine felt footsteps pushing forward. Their pursuers were about to strike.

“Now!” McCracken ordered.

The old man lowered his eyes and hesitated. McCracken was about to knock the diamonds upward himself when Earnst flung the contents of the jewelry box back over his shoulder.

The diamonds flew into the air, shimmering in the noon sun. The entire street seemed to come to a halt; the gems cascaded down, as if from heaven. Then the chaos set in.

Men and women clawed past each other. Some lunged into the street or toward the sidewalk in pursuit of the slightest glimmer. Others dove around or through bodies for stones far smaller than a pinky fingernail. All was bedlam, screams, shouts of anger, threats. Bodies piled atop each other. Stronger men peeled them aside to clear a path for their arms.

Blaine helped Earnst move to the edge of the chaos and then took off against the flow, smacking into people rushing back toward the frenzy. He gazed to his rear and the sight stunned him.

Four men in the black garments, beards, wavy side curls, and homburgs of Hasidim had yanked machine pistols from beneath their overcoats. The Hasidim were fixtures on this street, but not normally with guns in their hands. Their first bursts split the air in Blaine’s direction. Bodies collapsed with bloody punctures dotting their flesh. The screams intensified.

Blaine gnashed his teeth at the carnage. His strategy had exposed the gunmen all right, but now several people were dead as a result of it. He continued to run, blending with the crowd rushing from the gunfire and colliding with pedestrians who had stopped to gaze back toward the excitement. He sped under the scaffolding and past another delicatessen, heading for the street comer.

At least the killers were known to him now. Once through the scaffolding, he would draw them into the open. Any fire then would be clear of innocent bystanders, and Blaine would be able to take on his assailants commando-style. It wouldn’t be easy; their silenced machine pistols attested to their professionalism, but—

A woman smacked into him from behind. The impact knocked his arm against a street lamp, and the gun went flying under a sea of rushing feet.

Behind him the four black coats loomed closer. Blaine had no choice but to run; escape was his only option.

But not at the expense of more innocent people. With that in mind, he darted straight into 47th Street, zigzagging through traffic in a diagonal toward Fifth Avenue; the subway perhaps, a cab or bus. Bullets chewed the air. Screams tore at his ears, joined now by the shrieks of brakes and the crash of steel on steel as cars swerved sharply to avoid him. He sped onto Fifth Avenue with the awareness that the gunmen were very close and a continued flight by him would almost surely claim more innocent lives. He had to narrow the battlefield in order to gain the advantage.

The service entrance to a spanking-new building at 590 Fifth Avenue had been propped open by deliverymen, and Blaine sped through it up a wide set of stairs. He heard what must have been singing and had climbed three flights before a collection of crates deposited on the landing blocked his way further up. He had no choice but to go through a door that brought him to the origin of the singing.

He was on the dais of a synagogue that occupied the second and third floors of the building. A robed man, apparently a rabbi, was standing next to a young boy, while a man in different robes, apparently a cantor, chanted from a scroll. Few others were present. It must have been a rehearsal, a rehearsal for the boy’s upcoming Bar Mitzvah.

“Get out!” Blaine shouted, as he rushed forward, but his warning was barely complete when two of the Hasidim charged onto the dais after him. One stumbled and slipped but the other came straight for McCracken. The man aimed his machine gun.

Blaine grasped the heavy wooden ends of the Torah scrolls and swung the heavy object like a bat as he lunged toward the gun-wielding “Hasid.” The sacred symbol cracked into his face and tore his feet out from under him as the second “Hasid” regained his balance and a third came through a door at the front of the synagogue.

McCracken dove to the floor of the dais and rolled. He grasped the machine pistol of the downed “Hasid” and fired a burst at the second man now charging toward him across the dais. The bullets caught the man in the gut and sent him careening into the Torah stand. The stand toppled to reveal the terrified boy who had sought cover behind it.

The third assassin’s bullets flew wildly across the dais. A man screamed, then a woman. The boy crouched in fear.

Blaine leaped to cover the boy as the third “Hasid” fired a fire spray over the area where the boy had just been. The leap had separated Blaine from his gun and he swept the floor for it frantically. He found it just as the costumed killer, snapping a new clip into place, was charging up the synagogue’s center aisle. Blaine fired at motion more than shape as the front door crashed open and the fourth “Hasid” burst through.

The third had stopped and crumbled in his tracks. Blaine twisted to train his machine pistol on number four. He fired a split second before the last gunman and sent the man over two sets of seats. He was dead when he landed.

McCracken kept the boy tight beneath him as he checked the dais. A young woman was holding her arm. The rabbi was bleeding rather badly from a leg wound. Blaine eased the terrified boy gently up at the shoulders.

“Now,” he told him, “you can live to become a man.”

Chapter 6

“Blaine, where have you been? What happened? I’ve been calling the parlor and—”

“Never mind, T.C. Your grandfather’s safe, but it was close. I don’t know what he’s gotten involved in but it must be big. And unless I miss my guess, it’s got something to do with some twice-stolen crystals.”

“Crystals? You mean gems? Stolen? Blaine—”

“Listen to me. I’m not sure what these crystals are but they’re part of the mystery and they’re the only trail I can follow. But somebody might not want me to get very far, and it might not take them very long to put the pieces together. Just stay put at the Waldorf until you hear from me.”

“No, I want to—”

“You’ll do as I say,” he insisted firmly, then lowered his voice. “I’m going to tell you how to reach an Indian friend of mine in case something happens to me. You’ll be safe. He’ll make sure of it.”

“Blaine, you’re scaring me….”

“I just want you to appreciate me more when I come to pick you up.”

McCracken rented a car at Hertz’s midtown depot and headed out toward the home of Lydia Brandywine, which was in Woodmere. He wasn’t sure how she connected with all this but a connection was plain; the robbery had occurred days after she had examined the crystals. So she had alerted someone, the force behind the “Hasidim” perhaps, to their existence. Whether she had done so on purpose or not Blaine didn’t know. He intended to find out.

Lydia Brandywine lived in a large house, not quite large enough to be a mansion, off Chester Road. It was painted white, and its facade was dominated by a trio of pillars. The grounds were spacious, and a circular drive fronted the entrance. McCracken parked directly before it and climbed the steps. He rang the bell, waited a few seconds, and then rang it again. He heard locks being turned and then the door swung open.

“Have you seen my cat?” an old voice asked him through the crack left by the chain. “Have you seen Kitty?”

“No,” McCracken said, flashing his best smile. “Erich Earnst sent me. He’s recovered those crystals you were interested in, and he sent me out to inquire about possible settings for them.”

She gazed beyond him. “Has he recovered my cat? She’s disappeared before, though. Always comes back. Wants to eat.”

“May I come in, Mrs. Brandywine?”

“Why?”

“To discuss possible settings for the crystals.”

“Oh, yes.” She started the door inward to unfasten the chain. “Certainly.”

The door open, she bid Blaine to enter. He saw she was frail and wrinkled, her body hunched over. She was hardly the type he’d expect to be a second-floor customer of Erich Earnst and well known in the diamond district to boot. She wore a long dark dress with a shawl covering her shoulders.

“It’s so nice to have company. If only I could find Kitty. Here, Kitty,” she called. “Here, Kitty….”

Blaine followed her through the huge marble foyer to a set of double doors. She thrust them open to reveal a grand wood-paneled library dominated by shelves of leatherbound books.

“I feed her in here. Sometimes she hides.” She walked in, eyes peering about, voice higher. “Here, Kitty. I’m getting your dinner ready. It’s your favorite. Here, Kitty. Oh, where is that damn cat!”

“Mrs. Brandywine,” McCracken started, “if you could spare a few minutes….”

“What’d you say your name was?”

“McCracken.”

“First or last?”

“Last.”

“You have cats, McCracken?”

“No.”

“Don’t. More bother than they’re worth.” She moved to an elegant brass-legged glass table with an antique bowl atop it and a can of cat food resting alongside. Leaning over, she began to spoon its contents into the bowl. “She’ll smell the food and come running. That’s my best hope. Here, Kitty.”

“Mrs. Brandywine, about the setting …”

She swung toward him. “Yes. Wanted to make a collar for Kitty. Something different. Fell in love with the crystals at first glance. Just the kind of thing I had in mind.”

“The expense didn’t bother you?”

“Why should it?” She was spooning again now, tapping the last of the can’s contents out onto the side of the antique bowl. “Here, Kitty!”

Blaine kept himself patient. “The crystals, Mrs. Brandywine, did you tell anyone else about them?”

“Just Kitty. She was very happy. Didn’t run away for a week afterwards. Damn cat. Why do I bother?”

“Was there anyone else?”

She eyed him sharply. “Anyone else what?”

“That you discussed the crystals with.”

“Who else would be interested? Don’t get out much anymore you know.” She was mixing the cat food up now. “Here, Kitty!”

“How did you get into the city the day you visited our shop?”

Lydia Brandywine had to stop and think. “My driver. Victor.”

“Where is he?”

“With the car. I call him when I need him.”

Blaine felt he might be on to something. “Do you have his number?”

“Somewhere.”

“Did he ask you about the crystals when he drove you home from the parlor?”

“Kitty doesn’t talk much,” said Lydia Brandywine. “Sometimes, but not much. Ah, here she comes now….”

McCracken had time only to register the fact that the padding of approaching paws was too loud and out of place. He swung, too late his eyes told him, and he froze in his tracks.

Kitty was a black panther.

The big cat opened its mouth and snarled from deep in its throat.

“You’re carrying a gun,” said Lydia Brandywine, no longer interested in the cat food and suddenly quite in command of her faculties. “I saw the bulge. Reach into your belt and pull it out slowly. Move too fast and she’ll lunge. Don’t challenge her.”

As if to reinforce the old woman’s words, the big cat snarled again and whipped its paw through the air, claws bared. A single lunge away, a lunge that could be covered in the shadow of an instant. Blaine slid the pistol he’d lifted from one of the 47th Street assassins out of his holster and let it drop to the floor.

“Very good, Mr. McCracken,” Lydia Brandywine said. “Now slide it over here.” When he had, she stooped to retrieve it, all the while keeping her eyes on him. “Now move backward very slowly and settle yourself in that chair. Remember, slowly, and keep your hands by your sides.”

Again Blaine did as he was told. He found the chair with the back of his legs and slowly settled into it. The big cat advanced a bit, staying a lunge away.

“I’m going to leave you briefly. Rise from that chair and she’ll tear you apart. Move your hands from the arms and she’ll tear you apart. She won’t move so long as you don’t.”

Lydia Brandywine kept her eyes on him as she glided past, the gun clutched in her hand, no longer seeming as old. She petted the panther’s head on the way out. There was no phone in this room and Blaine figured she was moving to another to summon reinforcements. More of the men behind the attack on 47th Street, no doubt, and they’d be on their way here in minutes.

The cat snarled again, stretching its lips wide to show its teeth and whipping its long tail from side to side. Blaine knew he could not possibly move before it was upon him. Panthers were in many respects the most dangerous jungle cats, the best fighters, and the most precise killers. He was certainly no match for Kitty, even though he might have been able to disarm the woman. Once she returned, though, there’d be two forces to contend with. So if he was going to move it had to be fast. But how?

He remembered he still had the tranquilizer pistol loaded with one more dart in his right pocket. If he could extract it and fire before the big cat was upon him…. No, even if he scored a perfect hit, the panther would have the second it needed to find his throat. Blaine had to buy himself that second, as well as shoot.

He knew Kitty would lunge at the first sign of motion. But if the motion was deceptive it might be fooled long enough for the tranquilizer to work. Blaine heard Lydia Brandywine’s voice speaking to someone over a phone. He knew the conversation wouldn’t last much longer.

Blaine braced his legs. He was depending on the big cat to be just as quick and deadly as legend had it, so when it attacked he could make the lunge work in his favor. He pushed his legs hard on the floor and tossed his body backward, giving the chair all his weight. As expected, it toppled over. The cat lunged but failed to adjust to his tumble backward. Its leap carried it short, buying him the second he needed.

The tranquilizer gun was in his hand, and he fired as the cat regained its footing and came for him. The slightest fumble would have meant death, but the dart shot out with a fssssssst and thudded into the animal’s extended shoulders. The cat didn’t falter and kept coming. The huge jaws opened wide and lowered over him, teeth bared and breath hot and dripping, and he closed his eyes in terror, latching on to the beast’s throat instinctively.

But the panther was already limp with the weight of unconsciousness. Blaine heard Lydia Brandywine’s heels clicking fast for the library and lurched back to his feet. She had his gun and he was out of darts. He had another weapon, though.

As she crossed through the double doors, McCracken hoisted the sleeping panther up by its neck and let its feet dangle above the floor. It took all his strength and he felt his shoulders popping from the strain. Lydia Brandywine lurched into the room and steadied the gun with both hands a dozen feet before him.

“The gun’s a Brin-10, Mrs. Brandywine,” Blaine said ever so calmly. “Packs quite a wallop. Difficult to keep steady. You might get lucky but then again you might not. Kitty’s only stunned now but miss your first shot and I’ll break her neck. Miss your second and I’ll break yours.”

“No!” the old woman screamed, more out of concern for the cat than herself.

“I’m an animal lover myself, Mrs. Brandywine. Never think of harming one unless I have to. She’s just sleeping now. Still breathing,” he said, making sure to display the contracting chest. “See? But that will change if you don’t drop the gun and slide it over here.”

Lydia Brandywine’s old hands shook uncontrollably for a few seconds before she let the gun drop.

McCracken held fast to the cat. “You called someone. Who?”

“The party that hires me from time to time.”

“To do what?”

“Search out rare, precious gems and then furnish detailed descriptions. The cat, you’re hurting her!”

“No I’m not. You did that with the crystals you saw at Earnst’s?”

“Yes.”

“And then they were stolen.”

“I had nothing to do with it. Please let the cat go!”

McCracken wasn’t ready to do that yet. “Who are these men?”

“I don’t know. I swear it! They sought me out, paid me enough money so I wouldn’t have to move from my house. I never meant any harm!”

“These men did plenty today. They’re coming, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Let the cat down.”

“How long?”

“A half hour. Twenty-five minutes maybe.”

“I’ll be going, then. I’ll have to tie you up but I won’t make the bonds too tight. I promise.”

He let the panther down easy and tied Lydia Brandywine into a chair with drapery cords stripped from the wall. He checked to make sure they weren’t too constricting and was halfway to the double doors when he headed back for the glass table.

“She’ll probably be in a bad mood when she wakes up,” he said, lifting the cat food dish up and placing it next to the snoring panther. “I hate to see a good meal go to waste.”

The car screeched onto Lydia Brandywine’s property exactly twenty-seven minutes later. McCracken watched it from a concealed position behind a tree with his Hertz rental stowed safely out of sight. After fifteen minutes the three men returned to their car, and Blaine climbed back into his and followed them all the way back into Manhattan. It was rush hour and he fought with his nerves as the car he was shadowing maneuvered ahead of him, out of sight on occasion. He couldn’t risk being spotted by the men. If they were pros, it wouldn’t take much. He had given Lydia Brandywine his real name and she would have passed it on to them. A check would be made, and the men would know they had problems.

He managed to keep their car in sight right until it swung off Park Avenue onto East 48th Street. They continued on past Lexington and slowed as they crossed over Third Avenue into the Turtle Bay neighborhood, parallel parking into a spot before the low 200s. Blaine pulled past them and double-parked. In his rearview mirror he watched the three men climb out of their car and ascend the steps to the right half of a slate-brown townhouse duplex squeezed between a pair of larger brick buildings. One of the men pulled the steel security grating open and another unlocked the townhouse’s door. Seconds later all three men had disappeared inside.

McCracken saw a space open up almost directly across from the townhouse and reversed diagonally across the street to take it. Tires squeezed against the curb, he settled back against the seat. At this point his plan was to wait until the three men, or at least two of them, departed again before making his way inside the townhouse. Until then, he was alone with his thoughts.

The choice of Turtle Bay for a headquarters or meeting place struck him as strange. After all, this neighborhood was one of Manhattan’s most fashionable, home to numerous celebrities and wealthy businessmen. The townhouses on the north side of the street enjoyed a common garden, Amster Yard, which was not visible from the front; just one of the many features which placed Turtle Bay among the city’s most prestigious residential areas.

Two hours passed. Blaine watched the night fall soundly and the lights come on in the street, those inside the rows of townhouses slowly joining them. Cars continued to line both curbs but traffic had thinned markedly. Across the street, an entry light flashed on over the townhouse he was watching.

McCracken felt something was out of place and gazed up at the windows. None showed any light. Odd. If the men inside were still there, at least some of the lights should have been turned on. Their car was in place and Blaine was certain none of the men had left.

A familiar chill gripped him, a slow shudder following in its wake. He lunged from the car and hurried up the steps to the townhouse’s entrance. The steel grating had not been locked, leaving him only the door to negotiate past. Just a single lock which Blaine had out of the way in under thirty seconds. The door opened into darkness. McCracken stepped inside and waited for his eyes to adjust before pressing on. His vision sharpened and he saw a front hall with narrow rooms on either side of it, one of them a kitchen, and none furnished. The stairs leading upward curved a few yards before him. Leaving the lights off, he started to ascend, silently in case someone might still be upstairs.

The steps broke to the right as they neared the second floor and Blaine froze. Before him a pair of shoes protruded from a door. At the top of the landing he saw the blood, a pool of it in the center of the room’s hardwood floor. The room smelled of must, mold, emptiness.

And death.

The other two bodies had been propped up together along the wall in a neat posture, as if they had been searched after death. Each displayed a single bullet hole, like a ruby in the middle of the forehead. All three had been gut shot as well, which accounted for the blood on the floor. The bullets in their heads had been merely to finish them.

Whoever had done the shooting liked to inflict pain. Or had been ordered to.

McCracken stepped further inside. This room had a huge draped window overlooking the lush garden. The killer could have gained entry to the garden from another of the townhouses and once there could have made a straight route here, entering through the back. His task completed, he would have left the same way. That was why Blaine never saw him.

But had that task been completed satisfactorily? The killer had left the men alive long enough for questions, but they must not have pleased him; signs of a search were evident among the room’s meager furnishings. The stuffing of the furniture had been sliced up and scattered. The drawers from the room’s single desk had been pulled out and their contents tossed around.

McCracken had seen all this before. The apartment must have been a temporary headquarters for a team of agents. Right down to the black rotary telephone; standard issue in mobile operations.

These men had worked for the government!

And now they were dead. Killed by whom, though? McCracken felt the anxiety of confusion tearing through him. He had assumed all along the three men were part of the force behind the 47th Street assassins and the man with the tranquilizer pistol. Now, he wasn’t sure. A second party had made itself known — a brutal and efficient killer.

His heart thudding now, Blaine noticed a yellow legal pad sticking out from under the desk. He moved over to inspect and found the remnants of tape just where he expected them. Yes, standard procedure would dictate that the assigned team make notes at all stages of the operation to ensure accurate reporting. These notes would be kept hidden, usually taped to the underside of a drawer where a casual search would leave them unnoticed. This too was procedure.

Unfortunately the killer must have also been aware of this; the ragged fringe at the pad’s top indicated a number of pages had been torn free. All the pages that remained were blank.

But not totally. McCracken placed the pad atop the desk and grabbed for a pencil. Using the side of the point, he skimmed lightly over the top remaining blank page to trace out whatever had been written on the preceding sheet. The notes contained on it would have been the most recent. It took several minutes of very subtle work with the pencil before the outlines of words and phrases became visible. He found mention of the crystals, of Lydia Brandywine, and Earnst’s gem parlor.

And at the bottom, by itself, a four-digit number. The very last entry the dead agents had made.

McCracken went ice cold.

The number was T.C.’s room at the Waldorf.

Chapter 7

Blaine raced breathlessly the two blocks toward the Waldorf. His thoughts had shut off by the time he reached the hotel’s majestic entrance. They brought only pain, the realization of a hurt too horrible to accept.

He sped through the Waldorf s doors and took the marble steps leading up two at a time. He rushed to the elevator bank and pressed the up arrow. A compartment slid open and he was inside it immediately, pounding the CLOSE DOOR button as if it would make the machine get started faster. Twelve floors later he stepped out and dashed to T.C.’s room. The door was locked, but the security bolts and chain were not in place. He had it swinging open over the carpet less than thirty seconds later.

T.C. sat in a chair by the window, propped up facing the television. Blaine held his breath as he approached and let it out only when he saw the small red hole in the center of her forehead.

Blaine came closer, chewing his lips, fighting back tears. He wanted her to be alive, to be playing possum to confuse the man who had come to kill her.

He had spoken to her five hours before, six maybe. Told her to stay put. Maybe if he had sent her home they wouldn’t have found her. Maybe she’d still be alive. Maybe …

He could see her rushing to the door not long before to respond to a knock, thinking it was him probably. The end would have happened very fast. No struggle. Little pain.

McCracken sank down on the bed, too shocked to cry. He fought to still his shaking.

“Damn,” he moaned. “Damn….”

T.C. was dead, and he had helped kill her. He accepted the responsibility because he needed the rage that went with it, needed the guilt to push the grief back. The pain in him was sharp and lingering, worse than any bullet or knife. He wanted her back. He wanted it to be eight years ago all over again so he could have another chance.

Why? She hadn’t known anything, damnit!

Whoever was behind the killings in the townhouse was undoubtedly behind hers — the same killer, even, judging by the bullet wound. That there were two forces operating here was obvious. But which was responsible for what? Who was behind the “Hasidim,” the man with the dart gun? What had happened to require such a killing spree? The wild bullets in the street, three dead government agents, T.C., and possibly more.

McCracken buried his rising grief and guilt and forced himself to think. The dead agents were his only lead. They would lead him to someone in the government who knew more of what was going on and how the crystals were connected.

Which would lead him to those behind T.C.’s killing. Making them pay was the only thing he could still do for T.C.

Revenge was no consolation but it would have to be consolation enough.

Blaine covered T.C.’s body with a bedspread. He knew now what wheels he had to set in motion. For situations like the townhouse, various government agencies jointly operated a cleanup service. The contact number was changed often but was readily available. Always an 800 number. He dialed it.

“Sanitation department,” said a voice.

“There’s dirt on 222 East 48th Street in New York City. Operation’s probably on record.”

“That’s improper coding,” the voice came back.

“Send a crew.”

“State your designation please.”

“Tell them it’s going to be a long night.”

“What? Who is this?”

McCracken hung up. He had said enough. He knew they would respond because only someone cleared would have the number. They would check the on-call operations roster and find that the townhouse was active. A crew would be dispatched.

He returned to East 48th Street, walking slowly to catch his breath and settle his nerves, knowing it would be awhile before the cleanup crew arrived. In fact it was ninety minutes after his return that a nondescript white van double-parked in front of the townhouse. Two men climbed out and moved up to the entrance. Blaine saw one of them pull the steel grating back while the other worked the door with a skeleton key. Took thirty seconds. Too long. They were dressed in dark blue overalls which looked innocuously like uniforms from the gas or electric company. No one would question them.

At last they had the door open and were moving inside. McCracken waited until the two men were out of sight before drawing close enough to the van to assure himself only the driver remained inside. His elbow was propped into the night air on the open window sill. Blaine came up along the side stealthily, grabbed the exposed arm and yanked it brutally toward him and down.

The driver’s head struck the door frame hard. By the time he registered the pain, Blaine had him by the throat, squeezing just hard enough.

“One chance,” he told the man. “Who do you report to?”

“Don’t know,” the man rasped, straggling to force the syllables out. “Upstairs, they’re in charge.”

McCracken squeezed harder on the driver’s carotid artery until the man was unconscious. Then he made his way to the front door and pressed his shoulders to the left of the frame. Any second now one of the sanitation crew would return to the van for body bags or, more likely, a crate to remove the corpses. He saw a shadow sliding down the stairs inside and shrank further against the building, not even a flicker of his outline visible.

The sanitation man barely had time to open the door before Blaine was on him, hand ramming his face and forcing it backward as he hurled himself inside. He slammed the man hard against the wall, making sure he was out before letting him slump. The final team member was upstairs. The answers would come from him.

After closing the front door, he climbed the stairs and entered the room in silence. The third team member, his back to Blaine, was working on the bodies. Blaine grasped him from behind in a hold that shut off his wind.

He dragged the man to the nearest upright chair and plopped him down in it, easing up on the pressure enough for the man to breathe. He switched his position to the side so he could meet the man’s eyes and let him see the determination in his own.

“I’m going to give you a chance not to die,” Blaine said, maintaining a tight grip. “But only one chance.”

The man regarded him with eyes bulging in terror, proclaiming innocence as well as fear.

“Which branch were they working for?” Blaine demanded.

The man caught his breath and seemed surprised by it. “I’ve got a phone number, just a phone number.”

“I’m listening.”

“585-6740.”

“Area code?”

“Local exchange. New York City.”

“Very convenient.”

He tied the men up and left them in the van. He was functioning on automatic now, trying not to think about T.C.

From the townhouse, Blaine’s next stop was a phone box three blocks down. He needed to learn the address attached to 585-6740 and required only a touchtone phone to obtain it. He still had friends in the CIA who owed him favors, and they repaid their debt partially by keeping him constantly updated on changes in coding and procedures concerning the acquisition of information over lines. He dialed a number in Langley, Virginia, which linked him with the Company data base. Next he pressed out his request code, waited for a beep, and then punched in the number in question as if he were dialing it normally.

“Hotel National,” a mechanical, synthesized voice told him after twenty seconds. “42nd Street and Seventh Avenue, New York City.”

Blaine replaced the receiver.

At midnight Times Square was alive with people, though not nearly as many as the old mythology would have it. Most were simply strolling through the night, looking for nothing more than a bright light to walk toward and then by. The Square offered this, plenty of food stops, and twenty-four-hour movie houses. In addition to pornography and prostitution, it now possessed such developments as the Newsday Building and the Marriott Hotel that aimed at washing the area clean of its traditional reputation. But a number of buildings clung stubbornly to the old ways or at least images of them.

The Hotel National was among these. Its signs advertised “Newly Renovated” and while this may have been the case, another sign advertising rooms-by-the-hour seemed more prominent. The hotel’s front was well lit, except for a vertical lighted marquee with all its bulbs burned out. As McCracken passed under it he could hear a fizzling electrical current refusing to give up.

He headed through the glass entrance doors and moved straight toward a glassed-in cubicle directly before him, behind which stood a black man in a white shirt only half-buttoned. The lobby did look good, he had to admit, and he wondered if the renovations stopped there.

The clerk didn’t acknowledge his approach, and Blaine had to tap on the glass to get his attention. The man slid a section of the partition away.

“You wanna room?” he asked between puffs on a rank cigar.

Blaine had his pistol out, chambered, then through the opening and under the man’s chin before he could finish his next puff.

“Not exactly,” Blaine told him, pushing the gun up enough to force the clerk to his toes. “Don’t fancy this gun myself,” he said. “Not enough control. Need two hands to steady it, but I’m going to spare only one on you. You’re going to cooperate, aren’t you?”

The clerk struggled to nod.

“You rented a room tonight to some people who didn’t look like they belonged here, right?”

Another semblance of a nod.

“How many?”

“Four. Only one up there now. Room twenty-four. Second floor.”

“You sure?”

“Saw the others go out and they ain’t come back. That over there’s the only door.”

Three, Blaine reflected, the same number that had perished in the townhouse….

He freed a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and placed it on the counter. “Thanks.”

He sprinted for the staircase, gun still out. One man remained in the room upstairs, a man the cleanup crew would have reported to, a man who would have some answers. For him. For T.C.

He reached the room in question, the bottom half of the “2” and top half of the “4” missing. He could see the frame’s wood was rotted too much to resist even a slight kick, never mind a full one.

He threw a full one into it. The door shattered at latch level and flew inward.

Blaine was through it while it was still in motion, gun raised before the crash against the wall sounded. In the back of his mind he had already recorded that the room was all wrong: too big, spacious, well furnished, even smelled decent. He had recorded all this even before the voice of the lone occupant reached him in the half light.

“Good evening, Mr. McCracken,” said Ryan Sundowner. “I’ve been expecting you.”

Chapter 8

McCracken Looked at the youngish man in the tattered sports jacket and then at himself holding the gun.

“I’m Ryan Sundowner,” the man continued. “Head of the Bureau of Scientific Intelligence.”

“The Toy Factory,” McCracken followed. “I’ve heard of you. The fact that you knew I was coming doesn’t bode well for our friendship.”

Sundowner gazed at the pistol which Blaine had lowered only slightly. “If that statement was due to the fact that I’m a part of what you’ve become involved in, I accept the responsibility. Trouble is, I’m as confused and scared as you are.”

“Not quite. You were expecting me, I wasn’t expecting you. What the hell has the Toy Factory got to do with all this?”

“Long story.” Sundowner stopped. “The gun, Mr. McCracken, you really don’t need it.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“I dismissed my men to avoid any unpleasant incidents.”

“Lucky for them.”

“I know what you’ve been through. If it’s any consolation, the three bodies you discovered in the brownstone belonged to my men.”

“Your men? Then who—”

“Killed them and killed that woman? I don’t know. But between the two of us, I’m hoping we can find out. I’ve got a car waiting downstairs. I’m heading back to Washington. I’d like you to come with me.”

“I’ll go with you as far as LaGuardia. The rest depends on how much I learn to love your company. How’d you know about the woman?”

“Your call into the Sanitation Department was traced to her room.”

“Next question: why did she have to die?”

Sundowner didn’t respond until they were in the backseat of the car and the driver had pulled out into traffic. “It starts with those crystals.”

“Lydia Brandywine works for you,” McCracken realized.

“Worked. Past tense. They got her, too.”

“Efficient lot, aren’t they?”

“This is all new to me, Mr. McCracken. If I sound calm, it’s because I, you, all of us are facing something far more terrifying than a few deaths.”

Blaine’s eyes flared. “Not ‘just’ a few. You’d best remember that.”

“I understand how you felt about the woman. I spent much of the night going over your complete file. She was included in it.”

“That file was sealed after Omega. It was one of my conditions.”

“I unsealed it. For reasons of national security, a person with authority can do just about anything.”

“I don’t have a thing to do with national security anymore. Or was that left out of the file?”

“No, it was quite clear on that point.”

“Guess I made a mistake giving Lydia my real name. She passed it on to your goons and they passed it on to you before they died. Don’t know enough to keep my big mouth shut.” Blaine looked angry again. “Right now I’d like to shove those crystals down yours.”

“I’d let you if you had enough of them. That’s how important those crystals are to us. We’ve been looking for something like them for months, years really.” He started to reach into his pocket. “Here. You of all people deserve to see what they look like.”

Sundowner’s hand emerged with a jagged piece of ruby red crystal, perhaps six inches in length at its longest point. It was filled with grooves and ridges, seemed shiny even in the dull light of the backseat. McCracken took it in his hand. It felt cold, though it wasn’t. He supposed the coldness was in his mind, emanating from the fact that he was now clutching what had led to T.C.’s death. He wanted to fling it out the window but squeezed it tight instead.

“We call it Atragon,” Sundowner explained. “You are now holding in your hand the greatest natural power source ever known to man. We hope it will be the batteries to run Bugzapper.”

“Bugzapper?”

“I’ll give you a complete demonstration once we reach Washington.”

“I don’t remember agreeing to go. See, I’ve got my own trail to follow.”

“It’s the same one as mine, unless I miss my guess. Terry Catherine Hayes was killed by men who don’t want us to find further stores of the Atragon crystals. Find the crystals, and you find the men.”

“Is it really that simple?”

“In a sense, yes. But in another sense we’re facing the most complicated threat to our very existence we have ever faced.”

“You have a knack for being melodramatic.”

“In this case, I’m understating, believe me. Three days ago a small town was obliterated by a particle beam with some rather unique properties. There wasn’t a single carbon atom left. That includes the inhabitants.”

McCracken looked at him closely.

“Mr. McCracken, your file emphasizes the fact that you are obsessed with saving the world one piece at a time, that you can’t stand to see innocent people die. Well, over a thousand died in the town of Hope Valley, and that could be just the beginning. The wielder of the beam weapon is blackmailing us. Simply stated, we have three weeks to unilaterally begin the process of dismantling our nuclear arsenal or we will face annihilation.”

“The Soviets?”

“The indications are there, too many of them probably. The point is somebody’s got this death beam, and there’s nothing we can do at present to stop it.”

“I love phrases like ‘at present’.”

“It’s accurate here, I assure you. In effect, Bugzapper is a shield of energy effectively enclosing the entire country and rendering it invulnerable to enemy attack.”

“Missiles as well as death rays?”

“Under the right conditions, absolutely. But the right conditions include Atragon to power the shield. The crystal you’re holding acts as a solar receptor with tremendous storage capacities. A virtual twin of it powered three floors of the Toy Factory last week for over an hour.”

“Without burning up?”

“More than that, we had to shut the system down because our circuits were starting to overload.”

“So it was you who had the crystals stolen from Earnst in the first place.”

Sundowner nodded. “Yes. Standard procedure, I’m afraid, to avoid drawing attention to our experiments. There didn’t seem to be any rush for completing them at the time.”

“Until Hope Valley.”

Another nod. “With the realization that the crystals might be our only shield against annihilation, Atragon became a very precious commodity indeed. I ordered our men to move on Earnst to learn his source for it.”

“Only they failed, thanks to me. And then they got whacked by a first-class hitter a few hours after these four guys with beards and black coats traded in their prayer shawls for machine guns.”

“Dispatched, no doubt, by whoever is so determined to stop our search for the Atragon reserves before it gets underway.”

“And probably this same force is controlling the death ray that Atragon may be able to neutralize.”

“Exactly.”

“Fine. But you’re asking the wrong questions. How did this mysterious force learn about your sudden pursuit of Atragon? No, let me rephrase that. Who did you tell about the crystals and when?”

“The crisis committee. Yesterday.”

“Crisis committee, huh?”

Sundowner listed the occupants of the Tomb.

“One of them blew the whistle on you, Sundance. Fucked your plan up big-time and killed a girl I could have loved if she had let me.”

“That can’t be!”

“Wanna bet? Believe me, I’ve been there. The only one I’m ruling out is you because if you were the leak, I’d be dead already.”

Sundowner’s lips quivered. “But what you’re saying, it’s …”

“Welcome to life in the big city.”

The first signs for LaGuardia appeared.

“Then if you agree to cooperate, I should keep it between just the two of us.”

“Don’t bother because too many people already know I’m involved. The mole, whoever he is, will learn soon enough anyway.” Blaine changed his train of thinking. “I gather your operation at that fleabag hotel wasn’t a last-minute setup.”

“It’s our New York field base.”

“The clerk was yours then.”

“Yes.”

“Another mouth that could talk. Don’t hold anything back about me, because as far as you’re concerned I’m not helping. That’s the way it’s gotta be no matter what. See, Sundance, I took this sacred vow. Sort of like celibacy. The government fucked me too much, and I decided never to let them fuck me again. Somebody killed Terry Catherine Hayes, and if that person happens to know where the crystals for your Atragon shield are, that’s fine. But right now the only use for your crystals I can see is ramming them up the ass of whoever ordered her death.”

Another sign passed for LaGuardia Airport.

“Washington, Mr. McCracken?”

“Call me Blaine. Why not? I’ve got nothing better to do this morning.”

Hope Valley was just a sample of the awesome weapon we now possess. The United States of America has until midnight of April 21, three weeks from now, to unilaterally disarm and dismantle all nuclear devices or face annihilation from our death ray.

McCracken read the second communiqué that had come over the Turkish channel after they were en route to Washington by private jet.

“Mean business, don’t they?” was his initial response.

“They seem to.”

“We got any plans to actually capitulate and follow through with the disarming?”

“No.”

“Could it be accomplished in three weeks even if we did?”

“Of course not.”

“Don’t you think the framer of the threat knows that? Don’t you think he’d never actually believe we’d disarm unilaterally under any conditions?”

“Not unless he was very naive. What are you getting at?”

“Something smells here, Sundance. It’s smelled right from the time Hope Valley got zapped and it stunk worst of all when an innocent woman bought it a few hours ago. Why would someone demonstrate a weapon to make us do something we never would anyway?”

“We’ve discussed that.”

“Reach any brilliant conclusions?”

“We’re hoping it means the weapon isn’t deployed yet or perhaps isn’t effective on a wide scale.”

“Hoping isn’t concluding. We’ve got to face the fact that whoever wrote that communiqué blackmailed us without ever believing we’d succumb to his demands. Which means his demonstration in Hope Valley had a different purpose altogether.” Blaine paused. “Who possesses the kind of technology required to build such a beam?”

“Considering the research expense, the list stops at us … and the Soviets.”

“What does the General Secretary say? I assume the President has talked to him.”

“He denied all culpability and even knowledge of such a weapon. Offered to help in any way he could.”

“Mindless rhetoric. Could just as easily be playing it cool to keep us off guard. But at least they’re talking. That ought to delay World War III for a while.”

“We’re at DEF-CON 3 now. Might not delay it for long.”

McCracken stroked his beard. “Assuming my route takes me to your crystals, how much time would I have to deliver them?”

“For reasons I’ll explain in Washington, you’ll have one week.”

“Real generous with time, aren’t you?”

“My estimates indicate that Hope Valley was obliterated in three seconds at most. The precedent’s been set.”

Dawn had come by the time they landed in Washington and proceeded straight to the Bethesda headquarters of the Toy Factory. The Bureau of Scientific Intelligence blended with the countryside of which it was a part. The multiplex of buildings was unfenced, looking as much residential as commercial. McCracken and Sundowner drove through the well-sculptured grounds en route to the entrance.

A pair of marine guards held the door open for Sundowner, with McCracken right behind. Once in the lobby they made for an elevator that descended to the underground floors where the most sensitive experiments were carried out. They exited the elevator four floors later at a stop labeled D and moved straight for a door with yet another guard before it. This time, although the guard recognized Sundowner, the scientist was forced to key in the proper sequence on a pad to gain entry. Blaine entered in Sundowner’s wake and found the two of them to be alone in the lab.

“Welcome to the home of Bugzapper,” said Sundowner.

The lab was dominated by a scale model of the Earth nearly ten feet in diameter with the United States perpetually occupying the very center. Suspended over the stationary U.S., held in the air by wires running from a platform attached to the ceiling, were sixteen miniature satellites which looked to Blaine like fancy fluorescent light bulbs.

“A scale model,” explained Sundowner. “Since the life-size Bugzapper satellites will achieve geosynchronistic orbit, there’s no reason to add rotation.”

He moved to a computer terminal near the globe and, still standing, pressed a few keys. Immediately the miniature fluorescents caught, casting a bright haze over the whole of the scale version of the United States. Blaine noted that the light emanated from all sides of the miniature satellites at once, seeming to link each up with others.

“The light is just for effect,” Sundowner explained. “The real Bugzapper’s energy shield will be invisible.” He moved back alongside Blaine and led him up a set of stairs to a raised platform which looked down over and into the model. “What you’re seeing is being powered by an Atragon crystal the size of a fly’s wing.”

McCracken could hear a faint humming.

Sundowner reached down to a dish placed next to another computer terminal on a table beneath them and grabbed a marble. Handing it to McCracken, he said, “A miniature Atragon shield is thus in place. Toss the marble down into the light and watch what happens.”

Blaine dropped the marble down. There was a brief pfffffft and it was gone.

“By scale,” explained the scientist, “that marble was the size of a huge asteroid. You can see the potency involved here.”

“Except your shield is going to be facing a death ray, not marbles or even asteroids.”

Sundowner nodded as if expecting the comment. “Not really a ray, Mr. McCracken — a beam, specifically a particle beam composed of matter—subatomic in scope, to be sure, but focused into tremendous mass energy by the time it reaches the shield. Easily dense enough to activate the sensing mechanism.”

“What do you mean activate? You mean it’s not always on?”

“Active but not on. Otherwise the power drain would be immeasurable. Solving that problem, in fact, was the first major breakthrough we made.” He stopped and looked at Blaine more intensely. “Think of the way Bugzapper’s more mundane namesake functions. You’ve got a negative force confronting a positive force with the difference of potential not quite great enough to jump the gap — that is until a bug flies in and serves as a conductor between them. Energy passes through the bug and the fields are at last connected, with the bug paying the price for it, of course.”

“Not as simple in your system, though, is it?”

“Hardly. Four dozen satellites will compose Bugzapper at completion. And by the rules of astrophysics, they can’t possibly maintain a constant distance from each other. So we have to let them stray in their orbits. The distances will vary and it will be up to a super-computer to regulate the flow of energy emanating from each satellite to its neighbors to ensure the difference of potential is great enough so the gap can’t be jumped until something, a missile or a particle beam, forms a conductor. The computer’s judgments and instructions will be determined and made in microseconds.”

Sundowner hesitated and started back down to floor level, with McCracken right behind. “Of course, it was the discovery of Atragon that turned all this theory into potential reality. Without those crystals to serve as a power source, the shield won’t work.”

“And,” McCracken picked up, “you’ll need a hell of a lot more of them to fit forty-eight satellites, never mind getting them launched in time for it to matter.”

“Installation is no problem, since the satellites have already been fitted for some sort of solar storing receptacles. Adapting the Atragon once we’ve got it to the proper specifications won’t take long at all, so my feeling is the satellites can be ready for launch within ten days of delivery, the shield fully operational forty-eight hours after that.”

“Given the three-week time frame in the extortion note, that’s cutting things close.”

“At least, though, it gives us a chance.” Sundowner stopped. “I’ve explained what we’re up against. You can see how important this Atragon is to us.”

“Hold on, Sundance, I already laid things out for you. I’d like nothing better than to bring back your Atragon so long as its trail leads me to the men who killed T.C. But if the trails break off somewhere, you know which one I’ll follow.”

“I’m willing to accept that.”

“You don’t have much of a choice. Don’t try to follow me; your men won’t stand a chance, and the attempt will aggravate me to no end. I’m difficult when I’m mad, Sundance.”

“Can’t you give me some idea where you’re going?”

“Across the Atlantic.”

“Narrows it down some…. I could still hold back word of your involvement from the crisis committee, give you some room to move.”

“We’ve discussed that already, too. No, I’m more worried about a certain fat man named Vasquez. He happens to be a major narcotics distributor I KO’d just before I got shoved into the secretarial pool in France. He’s sworn to kill me if I ever set foot on his turf again.”

“And just what is his turf?”

“Most of Europe.”

“Terrific,” Sundowner moaned. “You realize, of course, that if you’re right about a leak in the Tomb, whoever killed my men and that woman might find you before you find them.”

“That, Sundance, is precisely the idea.”

Sundowner explained it all to the other men gathered in the Tomb, leaving out nothing but McCracken’s assertion about the presence of a mole. He had to doctor the story a bit to make up for it.

“So is he working for us or not?” the President wondered at the end.

“I’d have to say not. But he’s agreed to communicate with me regularly, and it’s my guess he won’t be able to resist finding the Atragon for us.”

“Why?”

“The stakes, sir. If this death ray is unleashed, millions of innocent people will die, and that’s the one thing McCracken can’t tolerate.”

“Don’t turn him into a hero,” cautioned CIA chief Stamp. Then, to the President, “Truth is, we’re talking about a rogue here, a renegade, a killer.”

“Killer’s a bit strong,” broke in Sundowner.

“Okay, I’ll grant you that much. But the others fit him well. What has become known as the Omega Command business proved that much. He forced the ruin or resignation of many of our predecessors.”

“That wasn’t McCracken’s doing, by my recollection,” interjected Secretary of Defense Kappel. “It was the doing of those individuals who brought it on themselves by the way they handled the situation.”

“Tried and sentenced by McCracken in Omega’s aftermath,” elaborated Mercheson. “Yes, it’s starting to come back to me now. This McCracken is a menace beyond compare.”

“Gentlemen,” said the President, “I’m a bit confused here. You mean this McCracken doesn’t work for us in some capacity?”

“McCracken doesn’t work for anyone, especially not us,” said Stamp.

“Why not?”

It was Sundowner who answered. “Long story. It starts back in Vietnam where McCracken was the best we had; an expert at infiltration, sabotage, all forms of counterespionage activities. He was a loner, yes, a rogue, by all respects couldn’t handle the ‘age of accountability’ at all. We kept trying to farm him out, and while he was working with the British a hostage situation came to an unpleasant end. To show his displeasure with the way things had been handled, McCracken pulled an Uzi on Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square and shot off certain sections of his marble anatomy. That’s where he got his nickname.”

“What nickname?”

“McCrackenballs.”

“As in—”

“Yes.”

“The point, sir,” broke in Stamp, “is that the balls McCracken has broken over the years haven’t all been ceramic. Plenty have been the flesh-and-blood privates of his superiors.”

“And usually with good reason,” argued Sundowner. “Omega was a case in point. The government called him out of exile to work for them and their subsequent treatment of him was inexcusable. Consequently, he’s sworn never to work for us again. He went free-lance, started taking on assignments and missions that no one else wanted any part of, almost always to pay off old debts and favors.”

“And now he’s after the killer of this woman,” the President reminded them, “not the reserves of the Atragon.”

“His only route to the former is to follow the trail of the latter, and he can accomplish it infinitely better than any team we could dispatch in his place.” Sundowner hesitated long enough for his words to sink in. “Either he’ll find the crystals or he’ll follow a path straight to the force that doesn’t want us to get them — the force controlling the ray. We win either way.”

“Nobody wins with McCracken,” said Mercheson. “Except McCracken.”

“I don’t see what we have to lose by the attempt in this case,” concluded the President, “or that we have much choice. McCracken is going out there anyway, and he’s the only one Earnst pointed in the right direction. He’s not working for us, so there’s no culpability on our part for his actions. He was straight with us, and Ryan was straight with him. So as far as we know, Blaine McCracken doesn’t exist anymore.”

“For now,” said Stamp.

Sergei Chernopolov, General Secretary of the Soviet Union, held the receiver tighter against his ear.

“There has been a change in plans, Tomachenko,” he informed the person on the other end. “An American agent has entered the picture. Bangkok must be put on hold until he can be dealt with properly.”

“Who is this agent?”

“Blaine—”

“McCracken,” completed Tomachenko.

“You know of him then.”

“I’ve heard of him.”

“Is he as good as they say, good enough to make inroads and gains?”

“It is possible.”

“Likely?”

“Hard to say under the circumstances.”

Chernopolov nodded to himself. “Then you know what you must do. McCracken is priority one. Take any steps you feel are necessary. Forget accountability. You report only to me.” He paused. “If you are successful, the slate will be wiped clean. You know what that means.”

“Yes,” was all Tomachenko replied.

Another assignment, another mission, and another success because it had to be. So much was riding on it. More than ever.

Strange how being a woman helped her so. Men underestimated her skills, perhaps hesitated in response to something as infantile as chivalry, or allowed a pleasing body or teasing smile to distract them. A nearly exposed set of breasts could make a finer weapon than any when wielded properly. And the woman used hers as she used whatever else was called for in the completion of her missions.

Her name was Natalya Illyevich Tomachenko. And she was the number one assassin for the KGB.

Chapter 9

The town of Pamosa Springs lies at the foot of the San Juan Mountains as they wind their way through southwestern Colorado. The town’s population, barely 700, is tucked into one of the gulleys between foothills that are dwarfed by the San Juans themselves. It’s pretty easy to feel small with mountains stretching nearly three miles high on either side of you, but the people of Pamosa Springs don’t look at it that way. Nor do they concern themselves with the fact that beyond a third side of town lies nothing but dry lands and open country all the way to Silverton. The only access road juts off Route 149; its only destination is Pamosa Springs. Being cut off from civilization on three sides makes for a solitude the residents call security.

The commercial center of Pamosa Springs, meanwhile, is barely a center at all. Just one main road with several buildings on each side, built for a time when the town was growing, and struggling for survival now that it wasn’t. A restaurant and a bar owned by Hal Taggart sat on either side of a seventy-seat movie house. There was a general store which took care of most essentials, and a mini-mart attached to the two-pump gas station that took care of the rest. The bank doubled as a post office, and the municipal building included the jail, mayor’s office, and no more. A small K Mart that had been in town for twenty years pulled out seven springs back, its space taken by a discount drugstore that stayed only long enough to learn it couldn’t break even.

Back then, and before, Pamosa Springs wasn’t exactly a boom town, but it certainly showed some of the signs. The natural hot springs running out of the Lake San Cristóbal area hadn’t yet dried up, and a fair number of visitors passed through after sampling a bath with purported rejuvenating qualities. Silver veins in the San Juans kept miners busy enough to need a place to sleep, eat, and buy equipment, and the railroad built a freight yard in the town with plans to lay track to connect up with the Durango and Silverton narrow gauge. But then the silver veins went dry, and the railroad went bankrupt even before reaching the nearest reservoir. The population of Pamosa Springs shrank from just over 2,000, and there were soon almost as many vacant houses as occupied ones.

The town’s present residents had stuck things out figuring there was still more good in Pamosa Springs than bad. Many had seasonal jobs at the neighboring ski resorts that kept them away for good parts of the season, which often stretched up to eight months. Others ran mail-order businesses or claimed to be artists. Still more commuted to work in cities up to 150 miles away. You could live like a king for practically nothing in Pamosa Springs as long as you didn’t expect too much. Nobody ever died poor in the town, but nobody ever got rich, either.

Until now maybe, some of the residents might say guardedly.

It had been an especially harsh winter in this part of Colorado, and the runoff that accompanied the spring thaw caused massive erosion and several minor landslides through the San Juans and the accompanying hillsides. A few hills bled their bellies open.

With silver running high in the town’s past, the first thought of the residents was that the shiny stones pulled from the dirt and rocks were more of the blessed mineral. Fact was, there were at least six different kinds of stones pulled from the mountainside and none of them was silver, which was not to say none of them was valuable. On the contrary, several held great promise, including some that looked like pink diamonds, and samples were sent off to the National Assayer’s Office in Washington for identification. The residents of Pamosa Springs sat back patiently to wait for the results.

Nothing had been heard in three weeks now, and life in Pamosa Springs mostly held to its menial normalcy. The local movie house held over a double feature of Rambo and Red Dawn for the ninth consecutive week. The town’s women composed their twentieth letter to Jerry Falwell, pleading with him to appear at their annual luncheon. Gearing up for the coming elections, a newsletter reminded residents that last time out, the Republican presidential candidate had carried Pamosa Springs with ninety-two percent of the vote.

And Hal Taggart continued losing customers. Since he operated the only sit-down restaurant in the Springs, this should have been impossible. But Taggart had detoured into misery and isolation since his son’s death in Beirut four years back, and some would say he’d gone clear around the bend. He’d been gone for three weeks after getting the news and disappeared for another two a few months later. Since then his bar and grill had become strictly a grill, open at sporadic, unreliable hours. And now when it was open, no one showed up. But Taggart washed the dishes regardless and talked up a storm to himself. Some said there were nights when he served up platefuls of the daily special to customers who weren’t there. And lately he had taken to shooting the rats in his storage room with an old .22 hunting rifle that hadn’t fired straight in a decade. The rats survived, and the town grew used to the quick blasts coming from inside the grill.

It was a lazy Tuesday afternoon when Hal Taggart caught a whole squadron of rats munching away at his cereal supplies. He was searching desperately for his rifle when the first of the army trucks pulled off the access road into the outskirts of town. The sight of what might have been an entire company rolling in with full battle dress and gear — jeeps, a dozen trucks, and squat-looking armored things with slats for machine gun barrels — grabbed the eyes and ears of just about everyone. Many ventured tentatively into the streets to watch the soldiers climb from the trucks and begin deployment, obeying the orders of a man dressed in fatigues but wearing a beret instead of a helmet.

Hal Taggart had located his rifle just as the company had pulled into town, but the damn rats had scurried before he could sight down on them. The smelly things were rushing out through a hole in the wall between the grain sacks. Taggart had just had enough. Gun ready, he rushed out the grill’s back door and gave chase down Main Street in the rats’ trail.

“You fucking bastards!”

Taggart’s cry carried down Main Street, followed rapidly by his charging frame with gun cradled in his arms.

The rest happened so fast that it seemed not to be happening at all.

A pair of soldiers saw Taggart coming and leveled their guns at him. He slowed but didn’t stop; his sad eyes were on the rats, and he was aware of nothing else. He was still giving chase when both soldiers fired. A pair of staccato bursts, and Hal Taggart was tossed backward, midsection and apron drenched in blood, arms and legs twitching when he landed.

The rest of the soldiers turned their weapons on the townspeople who were standing in the street in shock. Fingers grasped for triggers, uncertain of what to do next as people began rushing about with no clear sense of purpose.

“Cease fire!” screamed the bereted leader. “Cease fire!”

The echoes of a few random shots sifted down Main Street. Somewhere glass shattered. Then came stunned silence as the people of Pamosa Springs became prisoners in their own town.