The Omicron Legion

Chapter 1

Bailey was waiting when the limousine slid around the circular drive in front of the large house in Fairfax, Virginia.

“Good evening, ma’am,” he said as he opened its right rear door,

The woman slid out, high heels first, her long legs and hips clad in tight-fitting black pants. “My, you’re a polite one now, aren’t you?”

Bailey squinted at her. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before.”

“Special order, lover. What the general wants, the general gets.”

Bailey stiffened. “You’ve been briefed, I assume.”

“This one’ll go in the Guinness Book.”

“Come this way,” Bailey said, not bothering to hide the reluctance in his voice. He hated these nocturnal binges the general insisted he needed to maintain his sanity. He hated them, but never breathed a word of his contempt to the general. God, he revered the man, loved him. After all the general had been through in Nam, and with the tremendous responsibility he bore today, he deserved to indulge whatever idiosyncrasies he might have, no matter what anyone else thought.

Bailey had been there when the general had walked out of the jungle after escaping from a Charlie POW camp. He had served the general as he became one of the most powerful men in the Pentagon. Bailey held the rank of major, but he wore his uniform very infrequently these days, as did the general.

Bailey led the woman through the foyer and up the staircase that circled toward the second floor. She walked behind him, but Bailey was careful to keep her in his peripheral vision. He’d been a Green Beret long before shedding his uniform, and some things stuck.

On the second floor he stopped at the third closed door they came to. “This room leads directly into the study. The door is on the left side.”

The woman winked at him. “Like I told you, I’ve been briefed, lover.”

“I’ll be outside the whole time.”

“That’s up to you.”

“When he’s finished with you, you will leave straightaway.”

“Just the way I like it,” the woman said, and disappeared into the room adjoining the study.

Bailey assumed the stance of his silent vigil, regretting he could not move far enough from the study to obliterate the sounds that would soon be emanating from within.

Inside, General Berlin Hardesty sat eagerly in his leather chair, two yards away from a thirty-five-inch television. He heard the woman in the adjoining room and raised the remote control device that lay upon the chair’s arm. He knew the placement of buttons by heart, and went through the proper sequence without even glancing down. The first button turned the room to black, the second lit it a dull gray from the blank picture on the television. A third sent an unseen VCR whirling and brought the screen to life.

For all the technical wizardry, the quality of the television picture was notably poor. Grainy and hollow, too much contrast. The picture focused on a young woman lying naked on a bed of crimson sheets masturbating feverishly. The camera drew shakily closer to her, locked on her face.

The woman was Vietnamese.

General Berlin Hardesty’s fists clenched briefly, then he groped for the pair of small headphones perched upon the other chair arm and fitted them over his ears. The sounds of her moaning filled his ears. Hardesty smiled in anticipation of what was to come.

Seconds later a pair of masked figures strode into the shot. Surprise filled the woman’s face. They dragged her from the bed, where the camera followed them to a chair. The men thrust her naked form into the chair and strapped her arms and legs to it. The woman was still struggling. Her protests filled the general’s ears through his headphones. The camera zoomed in on one of the masked figures whipping forth a knife, then panned to the bulging eyes of the woman who suddenly froze. Her screams must have been too much for the microphone because they dissolved into static at their crescendo.

The general’s thoughts burned with visions of the past, of being tortured by the Vietcong during his six months as a POW. When he had at last escaped and emerged from the jungle, the memories of the pain had proven to be as real as the pain itself. Psychiatrists said he had to put it out of his head, to displace it on to something else. How right they were. The pain of others proved the only way to vanquish his own. And the pain of a Vietnamese — well, that transformed relief into ecstasy.

On the screen, the masked man sliced off the woman’s right nipple. The sounds of her agony drove Hardesty to moan with pleasure. As if on cue, the door from the room adjoining the study opened, and the nude form of the woman emerged. She glided toward him, her path illuminated by the dull haze of the television. She took her position in front of the general and crouched down. The picture’s dull light splotched over her as she slid her fingers over Hardesty’s crotch and found his zipper. His hands were working through her dark hair now. He could not say whether she was Vietnamese or not. Close enough, though.

On the big screen, the woman strained agonizingly against her bonds as her left nipple was severed.

Hardesty gasped as the woman took him in her mouth. Onscreen the masked figure drew the girl’s head back to expose her throat. Blood slid down from the right corner of her mouth. Terror and pain had silenced her rage, but her whimpers were delicious in the general’s ears. The camera drew in to capture her pleading face, then pulled back to include the knife poised for its next thrust. Hardesty’s hands dug into the head sliding back and forth over his groin.

Mira drew her hands upward, smiling to herself. Men were weak creatures, truly weak, so vulnerable to pleasure, so lost in it. This was the first of her allotted victims. How fitting that the kill would allow her to make use of the most special skills she had developed over the years.

And the special weapon.

She had gotten the idea watching a television commercial for artificial fingernails. A bit of glue, press on, and voila! Mira made her own, frosted the tips with melted steel, let them harden, and then filed them razor sharp. A glancing twitch to any major artery was all it would take.

Mira waited. She could follow the action on the screen from the general’s responses. She knew his moment would mirror that of the blade being drawn across the throat of the Vietnamese girl.

It was all Mira could do to keep from laughing as her fingers of death crawled up his chest.

Hardesty watched the steel blade touch the throat of the woman on the screen. In his ears her final pleas emerged weakly, hopelessly, in that bastard language. Her breath would be rank with their awful food. Her skin and hair would smell of the oils of that filthy country.

Just like the guards. Just like the guards!

The general saw the knife begin its arc, saw the spurt of blood leap toward the camera. The woman’s gasp filled his ears. His pleasure in that instant was so great that he felt only a slight twinge at his throat. In the next instant the screen was splattered with his blood, seeming to mix with the blood of the dying woman. Hardesty’s last thought was to free the air bottlenecked in his throat. He realized the gurgle in his ears was his own, since the Vietnamese girl was silent. She stared blankly at him, just as he stared at her. Soon his corpse was lit only by the pulsing glow off the television screen, which had turned to static with the end of the tape.

Bailey didn’t enter the study until he was sure he heard the sound of static. His key slid the deadbolt aside, and he opened the door and burst in. What he saw shocked and numbed him.

The general was sitting in his chair, blood pouring down his chest from the neat tear in his throat. His dead eyes bulged open. Bailey saw the open window. His soldier’s mind took it all in, prioritized his actions. Using the phone on the general’s desk was the first order of business. The woman was gone; she could only be found by marshaling forces that would lead to embarrassment and disgrace. The number he dialed had nothing to do with alerting them.

“Disposal unit required,” he said. Coolly he provided the general’s address.

“My God,” he heard the voice mutter. “How many?”

“One.”

“Stay on scene. Thirty-minute arrival time.”

Click.

Bailey pressed the button only long enough to get a fresh dial tone. Things would get cleaned up; the general’s good name and reputation would be preserved through it all. But the complications created by his passing could not be denied or ignored. Bailey knew what he had to do next. He calmly punched out another number.

“Section Twelve,” a voice said.

“I need Baxter.”

“One moment…”

“Baxter here.”

“Do you know my voice?”

“Yes.”

“I’m with the general. We’re running at Code Seven.”

“Oh…Christ!”

“Listen to me. You know what has to be done. Shred Omicron. Every file, every paper. It never existed. You hearing me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then get to it, son…And don’t fuck up!”

Chapter 2

Carlos Salomao leaned across the table. His eyes darted around the restaurant as he spoke again in a hushed voice.

“You must understand, Senhor McCracken. They would kill me if they knew I was meeting with you.”

Blaine McCracken leaned across the table also, his arms nearly resting against those of the Brazilian. “Just who are they, Carlos? You haven’t told me that yet, either.”

“Não sei, senhor. I don’t know…at least not for sure. It would be best if we start from the beginning.”

“That means with Johnny. I want to know where the hell they’ve got him stashed.”

“Please senhor. I must tell it my way.”

Blaine shrugged and pulled back. “Muito bem. As long as you tell me first where I can find Johnny Wareagle.”

Carlos Salomao’s eyes continued to scan the nearly empty restaurant. Every time the door opened, his shoulders tensed and his spine arched. Meeting in downtown São Paulo had been his idea. McCracken had expected him to choose a spot where he felt more at ease. Unless there wasn’t one.

“He is being held at a jail outside the city. We call it Casa do Diabo.”

“The house of the devil? “

“Many years ago prisoners were tortured within its walls. It is just a jail now, though fear of it still discourages crime.”

“If anything bad’s happened to Johnny, I’ll teach the jailers plenty about fear.”

McCracken had flown into Cumbica Airport some two hours before, after a flight lasting more than half a day. He had returned from London to Maine early Thursday. His Thanksgiving at home was uneasy, with Johnny Wareagle nowhere to be found. The call from Carlos had come yesterday evening, Friday, with a shadowy explanation as to why the Indian hadn’t been around as planned. Blaine had been able to make a Varig flight out of Kennedy Airport with a single stop in Miami. But if one hadn’t been available, he had been fully prepared to charter a jet to make the trip.

Carlos Salomao did his best to look Blaine in the eye, but his eyes kept drifting — first to the unsightly scar running through McCracken’s left eyebrow, then back in the direction of the front door.

“Senhor McCracken, your friend is in jail because Brazilian customs officials denied him entry into the country. He lacked a visa. They had no choice, but he took exception to their denial.”

“By exception, you mean…?”

“Several of the police officers attempted to restrain him. He injured a number of them.”

“Which doesn’t tell me what he was doing down here in the first place.”

“I sent for him, senhor, just like I sent for you.”

“You sent for him? Just who the hell are you, Carlos?”

Salomao tried to smile and failed. “I am many things, much like you.”

“What do you know about me?”

Salomao looked confident for the first time. “Before Vietnam or after?”

“Let’s try after.”

“Let’s see…You spent the rest of 1972 in Japan and then joined the CIA. You led the covert U.S. assistance effort for Israel during the October Yom Kippur War of 1973, then remained in Israel until the early part of 1974. From there, you took part in activities in South America, Africa, Germany, and Italy. You were suspended from active duty following an incident of gross insubordination in London, 1980.”

“Like to hear about it, Carlos? British feet dragging cost a plane load of people their lives. I decided to voice my displeasure by shooting the groin area of Churchill’s Statue in Parliament Square. Won me the nickname ‘McCrackonballs’.”

“Senhor, I—”

“And yours are next on my hit list — unless you tell me how you happened to come by some supposedly classified information.”

“I am in the information business, senhor. It is how I found your friend.”

“Found him for who?”

“I am part Tupi Indian, senhor. I was born in the Amazon Basin. I left, but my roots remain strong.” Salomao’s lips quivered. “Just over a month ago, three members of my tribe vanished in the woods. Since then, the killings have continued. No matter what steps they take, no matter what defenses they erect, some nights one or two of my people disappear. Sometimes hunters go out during the day and never return. When they are found — what is left of them, that is — it is terrible, senhor. They believe a demon has risen from the underworld to punish them, a demon they call Ananga Teide, the Spirit of the Dead. They asked for help, but only a special person from outside the tribe would be trusted.”

“Johnny Wareagle…”

Salomao nodded. “They accepted him as the living incarnation of Tupan, the Tupi god. He came down here to help, but he never got the chance to try. Now he is in Casa do Diabo — and there he will remain for a considerable time…without your help.”

“And how do you expect me to bring this off?”

“With your influence perhaps. And if that falls short…” Salomao’s shrug completed his thought.

“Yeah, bust him out so he can go up to the Amazon and finish what you called him down here to do. Thing is, I know he never would have told you or anyone else about me.”

“Não. I was able to get a look at his passport. Your name was listed as next of kin.”

Blaine smiled in spite of himself. “Close enough.”

“I am responsible for this, senhor. It is a wrong I must right.”

“Bullshit, Carlos. If you knew Johnny Wareagle at all, you’d know that he’s not about to walk away from an unfinished job. He’ll head straight for your Tupi tribe even if he has to plow through the whole Brazilian militia en route. And since you’re so up on my file, you know that I’ll be with him.”

Salomao didn’t bother denying it. “What I don’t know, senhor, is whether the two of you will be enough.”

São Paulo is a thriving, bustling metropolis, the center of Brazil’s banking and commerce. By far the largest and most modern city in South America, it seems a combination of the pace of New York and the expanse of Los Angeles. Skyscrapers dominate the horizon in jagged concrete clusters, while below, the din of screeching brakes and honking horns are common sounds within the ever-present snarl of traffic.

Because of this traffic, the drive from the airport had taken an interminable sixty-five minutes. But the traffic was lighter leaving the city; eventually giving way to a freshly paved four-lane divided highway leading north to Atibaia. As the miles sped by, the modern look of the city gave way to simpler and more rural forms of construction. Whitewashed stone and terra-cotta replaced steel and glass as the dominant building base.

The jail Johnny Wareagle was being held in, on the outskirts of Atibaia, was rectangular in structure and three stories high. The building had the look of an old fort, except for the chain-link fence topped with barbed wire that enclosed it and the blacktop parking lot within. Blaine’s papers were found to be all in order and, after a casual frisk revealed him weaponless, he was escorted down a long corridor. The walls smelled of must, mold, and age. McCracken figured the mere running of his finger across them would cause the years to peel back, layer by layer. He felt his nostrils clog with the dust filling the air and noticed that the loose-grouted floor tiles were producing a rattling echo underfoot. His escort opened the door to a small windowless room and told Blaine to enter.

McCracken did as he was told, but elected not to take one of the two chairs at a thick wood table. Except for these, the claustrophobic cubicle was barren.

Christ, Johnny. What the hell happened?

It made no sense, none of it. Johnny Wareagle was the most rational man Blaine had ever known, and their friendship stretched back over twenty years. Always, though, it was Blaine coming to Johnny, his mystical Indian friend, for help.

Until today. The tables had turned now. It was Wareagle who needed help, and Blaine was here to provide it.

He heard the already familiar rattling echo and turned back toward the door. As the rattling grew closer, a second sound joined it — that of clanging metal. Its origin was obvious even before the door was thrust open to reveal Wareagle, his wrists and legs chained in irons. He had to duck his seven-foot frame to make it under the doorway. The pair of accompanying guards shoved the big Indian inside and closed the door behind him.

“Hello, Blainey.”

“Hello, Indian. Nice digs you got here.”

McCracken’s humor seldom gained any reaction from Wareagle, and today was no exception.

“I’m sorry you were bothered,” the Indian apologized as he bowed his coal-black ponytailed head. “It was not my choice.”

“I’m here, Indian. Now tell me, what gives?”

“What did the little man tell you?”

“That he asked you to come down to Brazil to help out some Indians. That you landed here after busting up some Brazilian authorities who didn’t welcome you into the country with open arms. Accurate?”

“More or less.”

“Which?”

Wareagle gazed down at him, the stare unlike any Blaine had seen from him before.

“He should not have involved you, Blainey.”

“Too late. I’m here.” McCracken pulled back one of the wobbly chairs. “Let’s sit down.”

Wareagle obliged, settling himself uneasily in the chair that was much too small for him. Its legs creaked from the strain.

“You’re in a hell of a mess, Indian. Two of the cops you put in the hospital are gonna be there for a while. Not like a man of your experience to lose control.”

Wareagle hesitated. “I have never experienced anything like that which drew me down here.”

“Carlos drew you down here — and the biggest mistake you made was not calling me before you left.”

“You were in England. I did not think it fair to disturb you.”

“My holiday could have been postponed.”

Johnny looked at him somberly. “I needed to come alone.”

“I missed you Thanksgiving, Indian. I’m not much good in the kitchen,” Blaine said, instantly aware that his attempt at humor had failed again.

“Please, Blainey. Do not look for that which is too far out of your line of sight. I am a warrior. In my veins flows the blood of others who shed it fighting for who they were. The spirits counsel that we only die when we fail to live true to the legacy of that life force. After the hellfire, I died and the blood ran cold in me. But then you breathed new life into me that winter night and reminded me of my true heritage. There was so much I had to make up for. Years, Blainey. Years where I forsook the very creed that made me. This is my chance to atone, to push the blood of my ancestors through veins that beg for it. For them. For me.”

“You’re speaking about now, Indian?”

“My work is not nearly finished.”

“Not a lot you can get done behind bars.”

“I will find my way out in time.”

“Not without help, you won’t.”

“This is not your fight, Blainey.”

“Sure, and the dozen or so I’ve involved you in weren’t yours, either. Look, Johnny. I might not be able to hear those spirits of yours yet, but I’ve got a pretty good sense of how they talk. If you’re down here for a reason, then I must be, too.”

Wareagle could do nothing but shrug.

“Look, Indian. All the pull in the world’s not gonna get you out of here anytime soon. So first off we’ve got to come up with our own version of early release. Then we head up the Amazon to find whatever the hell it is that’s killing these Tupis. See, I’m signing on, Johnny. For once, your war becomes mine.”

The Indian smiled faintly. “Blainey, our fates are connected at the level where only the spirits roam. I knew it from the first time we met in the hellfire, where we fought the Black Hearts. But the enemy we face this time has no heart at all.”

“Monsters, Indian?”

“As close as can be, Blainey.”

Chapter 3

Jerry Dean Taylor left the homeless shelter just after midnight. The unseasonably cold temperatures had brought more people in off the streets than the staff was prepared for, and the result was a frantic rush to create enough bed space and come up with sufficient hot food. Volunteers didn’t show up in volume until the real Philadelphia cold kicked in, so Jerry Dean found himself dishing out soup for the better part of the evening.

The funds that allowed for the center’s existence and upkeep came from his foundation, but Jerry Dean was not — had never been — the hands-off type. He threw himself headlong into a problem he saw as the scourge of America. What kind of country was it that couldn’t ensure adequate homes for all its people? Obviously the public sector was failing, leaving it up to the private sector to pick up the slack. The program Jerry Dean was piping millions into was being used as a pilot all across the country.

Jerry Dean had parked his car two blocks from the shelter, but it might have been miles, his knees making him pay for every step. Seven years of high school and college football had ruined both of them, and spending the night on his feet wasn’t exactly aspirin. They’d been better since he’d lost the thirty pounds to get back to his college weight of two-fifty, but there weren’t enough working parts left in either of them to make any weight loss vanquish the pain.

No jogging tomorrow, coach….

Jerry Dean’s car was in sight when he realized he was being followed. The steps were just muted enough to tell him the walker was trying to disguise them. He tensed. People knew him around here, knew what he was about. And he knew the gangs and the junkies, some on a first-name basis. Most people left him alone, and those that didn’t know him should have been warned off by a frame that was still six-four off the ground, though a bit softer around the edges.

Jerry Dean spun as the muted footsteps continued to clack on the concrete behind him. Nothing was there. Just the night and the splotchy glares of shattered streetlights. But there had been someone.

Jerry Dean turned his attention to his car. Twenty feet away was all. Couldn’t run, though. Worst thing he could do under the circumstances was show his fear.

But there’s no one here.

Jerry Dean was scared, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him scared stiff as a frozen cheesesteak. He reached the car, relaxing a bit since the steps had not returned. His hand probed a key forward toward the lock, was just inserting it when the flash came. He flinched reflexively, but his hand stayed where it was. He heard the crackling thud just before the pain exploded in his wrist. Then he saw the glinting steel.

Jerry Dean howled in pain as a dark shape whirled in a blur beside him. The steel flashed briefly again, and he felt the side of his head give under the force of another impact. Jerry Dean felt himself reeling. He was dizzy and nauseated, but something kept him on his feet. The shape swirled at him again, and this time he managed to raise an arm into the flash’s path. He felt his forearm give, and again pain flooded his insides.

But somehow he didn’t feel scared anymore. He didn’t even hurt.

All he felt was rage.

“Come on, you fucker!” he challenged, swinging alternately with both of his damaged limbs.

The blows, though, landed only on air. The shape was there, always ahead of him, dancing at the outskirts of his range. Jerry Dean had hauled back for a roundhouse punch when the worst of his two knees, the right one, got slammed and forced him hard to the pavement.

He screamed in agony as the shape loomed over him. In that moment, frozen in the landscape of pain, he thought quite rationally that his attacker was at least as big as he. The man was Oriental, cloaked in black, only a thick, round face exposed. Jerry Dean tried to block the attacker’s downward blow with upraised arms. But the glinting steel split the distance between them and smashed his face.

For Jerry Dean the pain stopped there, but he was somehow still aware of the trio of blows that followed before life and consciousness were stripped from him at the same time.

Not even breathing hard, Khan stood over the pulp that had been a man. The screams he’d evoked caused lights to snap on and faces to peer out from behind the safety of windows. But before the first eyes looked down, Khan had melted into the night once more, his blessed steel killing sticks back in their sheaths.

The yacht fought its way through the sea, pounded at every turn by the crushing swells. The storm had ended hours before, but its residue was a harsh wind that kept the waves mean. Water splashed freely across the big boat’s decks, lashing her windows like an unwanted guest determined to gain entry.

It was only a short distance from the radio room to the library, but Tiguro Nagami struggled for every step, forced to grasp the rail firmly to pull himself along.

“Come in.” The voice came from inside before Nagami could knock. He entered.

Oddly, the yacht’s sprawling library seemed to be spared the sea’s vicious onslaught. Its semidarkness revealed a safe and steady setting, undaunted by the sway.

“Khan has reported in, Kami-san,” Nagami reported to the figure huddled behind the huge desk. “Taylor has been eliminated. That brings Khan’s list to three.”

The figure behind the desk switched on his computer and pressed the latest data into the keyboard. The dim glow from the monitor caught the ghastly whiteness of his skin and hair and shimmered off his pinkish eyes. Any more light would have hurt those eyes. They had been the scourge of Takedo Takahashi’s life since the very beginning, and the affliction was growing worse. It was now impossible for him to tolerate the sun. He spent each day behind drawn blinds, venturing out only at night.

“That makes twelve so far in all,” Takahashi announced. “Exactly one-eighth of our list has been dispatched in barely six days. That’s ahead of schedule, isn’t it?”

“Slightly, Kami-san,” replied Nagami.

Kami-san, translated as Ghost man, was the label Takahashi had been branded with for the better part of his life. He did not run from this reality; in fact, he mocked his own disfigurement by only wearing suits that matched his skin’s pallor.

“And thus far no complications have arisen,” said Takahashi. “We chose our people well, Tiguro, exceptionally well.”

Exactly ten days had passed now since the meeting that had taken place in this very room. The lights had been turned up that night, but Takahashi still declined the sunglasses he normally would have worn, because he wanted the group of six assembled before him to see his resolve clearly at all times. They did not know his real name, nor did they want to.

But Takedo Takahashi knew them; if there were any more proficient killers in the world they would have been in the room instead. Six assassins of unparalleled prowess, chosen after months of scrutiny. Assassins who had not a single failure to their names. The room had quivered with the coldness they brought to it. Takahashi inspected each of the killers closely, focusing on features or mannerisms. The Mongol had the largest hands he had ever seen, yet was making a quarter dance nimbly from finger to finger. The bald-headed black wouldn’t let go of a smile that flashed whiter than Takahashi’s suit. The woman’s beauty attracted even his stare. The Israeli and the Arab were seated next to each other as if to affirm their lack of political opposition. The American assassin had moved his chair back a bit from the circle.

“…The time has come to explain why I have summoned all of you here this evening, to make clear what it is you are being hired to do. There are ninety-six Americans who must die within the next six weeks. Two of these are United States senators. Three more are congressmen. Four hold Cabinet-level positions. Five are associated in varying respects with the military. The remainder are business people: industrialists, financiers, manufacturers. In short, all individuals who have reached significant levels of power and influence.”

Takahashi paused to let his words sink in. He closed his pink, crystalline eyes briefly to rest them. They watered when he opened them again to view the response of the group gathered in chairs about him. The killers seemed flabbergasted. The huge Mongol had stopped twirling his quarter. The bald black was no longer smiling. Takahashi had continued speaking before any of them could interrupt.

“The ninety-six targets have been divided into approximately equal portions each of you will be allotted. Complete dossiers on all have been prepared and will be distributed to you in packets as soon as our business tonight is concluded. As indicated, you will receive one hundred thousand per killing, with the balance of the agreed upon twenty million paid on completion of the entire contract….

“It will, of course, be necessary to take measures to avoid any connection being uncovered until it is too late. You are all professionals, so I need not offer counsel on how to go about this. Accidents, disappearances, a variety of means are at your disposal. You should not consider the targets’ families to be sacrosanct if it aids you in your work. They are expendable. You need make no accounts or explanations for your actions. Travel arrangements and contact procedures are outlined in your dossier packets, along with the means through which you will obtain compensation. Reports following each of your successful eliminations are, of course, mandated, so I can stay updated on your progress. Now, if there are no questions…”

There hadn’t been, and the six assassins were sent on their way. Now, ten days later, Takahashi reflected on the success encountered already. Twelve kills, imagine it! His plan had dared to account for an acceptable margin of error, but as of this point there had been no margin at all. Even he could barely believe it.

Takahashi gazed up from his desk, a rare smile etched across his face.

“You will keep me informed, Tiguro.”

“Of course, Kami-san.”

Takahashi’s eyes had already returned to his computer, the milk-white glow off the monitor seeming one with his flesh. “Eighty-four more, Tiguro. Eight-four more.”

“Then you’re suggesting our competitors knew what to bid because they knew what our bid was.”

“More than suggesting, Miss Eisely.”

Patrick O’Malley was sole proprietor of the Devlin Group, one of the largest consulting firms in the world. Loyal to his Irish roots, O’Malley had given his business his mother’s maiden name. The Devlin Group had created blueprints for hundreds of successful businesses spanning the globe. These blueprints were often imitated but never equaled, making Devlin the most sought-after firm of its kind anywhere. But in the last several months, other firms were coming up with virtually identical proposals for significantly less money. It wasn’t the money that bothered O’Malley so much as the violation. Security was everything to him, and had been for years. Seeing it breached made his flesh crawl.

His offices and home were guarded twenty-four hours a day by trained bodyguards. They ran advance for him for all in and out of the country business trips. O’Malley never entered a restaurant until they had checked it. He never left one until the outside had been cleared. All guests entering the Devlin Building passed unknowingly through a metal detector. No bells chimed if a register was made. Instead, two of the guards would be waiting for the visitor when he or she stepped out of the elevator.

“Now then,” Patrick O’Malley continued, reaching for his glass of Perrier, which he always drank with plenty of ice and a twist of lime, “if you’d be so kind as to turn to page five of the report, we can begin discussing the new security measures I trust all of you will enact and cooperate with.”

The sounds of pages ruffling filled the conference room. O’Malley took a hefty sip from his Perrier and felt the ice cubes brush against his lips. “First off,” he began in the instant before his eyes went glassy. “First off…”

Patrick O’Malley tried to grab the conference table for support; when that failed, he groped for the arms of the chair behind him. He managed to find them, but crumpled before his purchase was firm. He hit the floor, kicking and twitching, before the horrified eyes of his executive staff.

“Call 911!”

“He’s having a heart attack!”

“CPR! Now! Fast!”

O’Malley was dead before they could even get started, dead before the conference room doors burst open to allow a pair of security guards to rush through. Heart attack was indeed the initial diagnosis by the medical examiner, one later confirmed under autopsy.

Jonathan Weetz did not learn of the death until the following morning’s New York Times. He had injected an incredibly potent and quick-dissolving form of taxine poison into the six limes present in O’Malley’s office refrigerator. No way to tell how long it would be before he used a slice. The specifics, though, didn’t matter.

O’Malley’s death meant three down and thirteen to go, and thirteen was his lucky number.

Chapter 4

“Well, look what we have here….” McCracken had seen the burly figure in the Caesar Park Hotel lobby an instant before the voice assaulted him. Now it was too late to turn away.

“Hello, Ben.”

“Always said you meet people in the strangest places.”

Colonel Ben Norseman was wearing the ugliest Hawaiian shirt Blaine had ever seen, a pair of monstrous forearms sticking out from the baggy sleeves.

“I’d like to say you were a sight for sore eyes, Ben, but mine didn’t hurt until they saw you. Who’s handling your wardrobe these days?”

Norseman plucked at the awful red floral pattern. “Hey, when in Rome…”

“I doubt you’re down here as a tourist.”

“Nope. Business. Usual stuff. Right up your alley, if you’re available.”

Blaine shook his head. “Sorry.”

“Hey, what are the odds, the two of us meeting in the same place after so long? Call it coincidence.”

“Call it unfortunate.”

“Hey, fuck you, McCrackenballs. I was trying to be sociable.”

“Hardly your style, Ben.”

The two men regarded each other distantly from a yard apart. Norseman had changed as little in appearance over the years as McCracken. A few inches taller than Blaine at six-four, Norseman’s neck was still creased with knobby muscle that pulsed with each breath. His mustache showed its share of gray, and his dome was now completely bald. It gave a harder edge to the colonel’s face, as if he needed it.

Ben Norseman had been part of the Phoenix Project in Vietnam as well, a Green Beret who’d already put in five years in the jungle when Blaine arrived in 1969. Norseman stayed because he liked it, liked everything about it. He fed off the killing. When the war ended, interested parties in the government made sure it was still there for him. Last McCracken had heard, he and a small elite troop he was running were handling deep cover, strictly top drawer stuff. They were little more than hired killers, but they did their job exceptionally well.

So what was Ben Norseman doing down here? What “usual stuff” had brought him down to Brazil?

“Hey, asshole, our styles are more alike than different. I’ve been keeping up with ya. Heard about what you pulled off in Tehran. Damn good work. You get a mind to it, you know there’s always a place in my bunch.”

“Sorry, Ben. Kicking kittens and steering old ladies into moving traffic was never my cup of tea.”

Norseman’s lips puckered and the veins bulged in his knobby neck. “Anytime you want to settle what we’ve got between us, just let me know.”

“Now would suit me fine. I’d ask you to step outside, but I’m afraid you might use a couple of kids for a shield.”

The bigger man backed off a bit. “I’m on business, like I said. I wasn’t, the two of us could dance right now.” Norseman came close enough for Blaine to smell the spearmint gum on his breath. “Our day’s coming, McCrackenballs. High time somebody gave yours a squeeze. Show you what it feels like.”

“Your hands aren’t big enough, Ben,” Blaine said, and backed slightly away. He waited to see if Norseman was going to move on him. When he didn’t, McCracken slid toward the front desk. “Be seeing ya.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it.”

McCracken watched Norseman move through the hotel doors and approach a white van parked directly outside. Only the driver was visible, but Blaine knew there would be another five of Ben Norseman’s men in the back. Killing machines born too late for Nam and making up for it now, all trained and hardened in the image of their fearless leader. Blaine was thankful for the fact that whatever they were down here for had nothing to do with him. If it had, Norseman never would have initiated the conversation. He was too dumb to play stupid, but he was as fearsome a soldier as Blaine had ever known.

McCracken had other things on his mind now in any event. Johnny Wareagle had supplied the precise location of his cell, along with all the information he had been able to gather about the jail complex itself. Blaine wasn’t worried. This wasn’t a prison, after all, it was a regular jail. Though well fortified, people came and went regularly, and there wasn’t a lot of perimeter security.

He would still require explosives to get the job done, but elaborate charges were a luxury he would have to do without, which left him with no choice other than to utilize those of a homemade variety. A brief discussion in English with the hotel concierge provided him with the locations of area stores where the required supplies might be obtained. After a quick shower and lunch, he was off with shopping list in hand.

It took all of two hours to obtain the goods he needed. Purchases from a pair of markets, a hardware store, and the toy section of a large department store filled his needs admirably. Just before four o’clock, he and his four shopping bags returned to the Caesar Park for the more difficult task of assembling the charges.

Blaine emptied the contents of his shopping bags onto the large single bed and separated them into four piles. His first task was to combine all of the packages of children’s clay he had bought into a single lump and then work the heavy steel roofing nails into the mass by pushing, sliding, and squeezing. The single irregular bulk then had to be separated into the proper shapes, as equally symmetrical as he could manage with only his eyes to guide him. Next he combined his store-bought chemicals and cleaners in the proper proportions, using three standard hotel ice buckets as pots. When this was completed, he poured the contents of all three into the plugged sink. Then he began easing the steel-laiden clay shapes in under the surface, one at a time.

It took nearly two minutes for each to absorb the proper amount of liquid. Blaine set the finished products to dry on towels laid over the double bed and turned his attention to the timing devices. He much preferred working with transmitter detonated charges in such cases, but no such luck — or technology — here. He’d have to rely on the guts of simple travel clocks, all wired to the same moment. The alarm activator would serve as the trigger, set with intervals of just seconds between each blast to maximize confusion.

The only remaining problem was how to gain swift access to Casa do Diabo with minimal risk of drawing attention to himself once the charges were set. And the answer occurred to him as he gazed over his balcony at the homeless drunks being carted away by the São Paulo police.

“Come on now! Get a move on!”

The parade of drunks flowed toward the jail door in a wavering stream. In the back, inevitably, a single laggard needed to be prodded on by one of the São Paulo policemen. In the front, just as inevitably, one would stagger and force those behind him to smack together like bumper cars in an amusement park.

“You there, where do you think you’re going?”

Blaine McCracken was lumbering about at the periphery of the small mass, the illusion created that he had once been a part of it and was seeking to separate himself. He felt a pair of angry hands grasp him at the shoulders and shove him sideways, to be absorbed by the group.

“Bastard!” exclaimed the officer.

The pace and surface of São Paulo cannot hide the truth of the awesome poverty and unemployment that fills the city. Many of Brazil’s poor have flocked there in search of what the countryside failed to give them, only to find that the city offers them no better. Accordingly, the drinking problem in the poorer sections of São Paulo and its outskirts is extreme. When confined, the problem is generally ignored. But every night, drunkards venture into the more respectable downtown sectors and are hauled away en masse to sleep off their troubles in the nearest jail.

Casa do Diabo.

The roundups started midevening and continued through the night, providing Blaine with the simplest means to enter the building unnoticed. He had pulled his stolen Ford off the road a quarter-mile from the jail and abandoned it. By a stroke of fortune, he discovered a main power junction on top of a pole halfway to the jail, and planted his first charge there before pressing on. He reached the fence that enclosed the complex and chose the darkest spot to make his climb. He used wire cutters to strip away the barbed wire at the top, then dropped effortlessly to the ground, his sack fastened tight to his back.

He stayed low and crept to the asphalt parking lot at the building’s front. With uncharacteristic deliberateness he approached various cars in the lot and worked into place the remaining dozen homemade explosives he had fashioned that day. The best place to plant them was not near the fuel tank or engine, but beneath the fuel line itself. That way, when detonation came, the fumes would ignite and spread the fury throughout the engine.

Starting at midnight. Show time.

McCracken spread his work throughout the lot instead of focusing in a single sector. Unlike the plastic explosives he was more used to dealing with, his children’s clay facsimiles did not readily adhere to the vehicles’ steel undersides. A roll of duct tape was necessary, and he was careful to make sure the timing mechanism was wedged home tight and set before pressing on.

When midnight came, the explosive clay would spew its roofing nail contents outward and puncture the steel about it. The sheer force would then join the fumes and available gas in the line to create a fireball where a car had been just seconds before. Lots of noise and light. Those inside the jail would think they were under attack.

The parade of drunks was mounting the steps now. Blaine let himself be swept up in the flow, eyes kept low and shoulders hunched. He had covered his clothes with dirt and cheap rum for the desired effect. His thick hair was disheveled and pulled down over his forehead. He had disarranged his beard back at the hotel to give it an equally unkempt look. But he kept his head down on the chance one of the policemen might notice his piercing black eyes. A dead giveaway to a man with experience, a reason for suspicion for a man without.

Once inside the building, the mass did not pause at the front desk for booking. In fact, that station was bypassed altogether in favor of a door leading to the basement section of Casa do Diabo. The officer at the front jammed a key into the lock and then swung it open. A second officer led the way; when all the arrested drunks were through it, the first rebolted the door and brought up the rear.

Just two to overcome. Blaine couldn’t have asked for any better luck.

The staircase was dank and cold, lit only by a single bulb dangling on a wire from the ceiling. The mass walked pressed against the side wall for balance. The descent leveled into a wide hall that was more hard-packed dirt than surface stone. Blaine could hear the whimpers and wails of those already incarcerated up ahead. The smell of urine and sweat grew stronger by the step. The raw night dampness down in the jail’s bowels was bone-chilling, the walls shiny with accumulated moisture and layered with patches of green mildew.

When he could see the cells flickering in the dim light ahead, McCracken began to ease his way forward through the drunks. Just six to pass by before reaching the lead officer. He moved gently, unnoticeably, quickened his pace at the last to bring the officer into range. Cells were clearly in view now, hands stretched between the bars, angry or desperate pleas shouted outward in Portuguese.

Blaine threw himself into a lunging stagger that engulfed the lead officer’s legs and took him down. The whole throng reeled backward in a whiplash effect, some tumbling.

The officer was in the process of shouting out when McCracken’s iron fingers found his throat to silence him. With no time to be subtle, he slammed the man’s head against the hard floor to knock him out. The officer at the rear was storming forward by this point. He struck a meaty hand downward to yank McCracken up. Blaine let him, went with the motion, and came up with fists flying. The first blow to the solar plexus doubled the officer over with a violent expulsion of breath. The man was still slumping when Blaine slammed a knee under his chin. Impact lifted the officer off his feet; he slumped down against steel bars infested with curious hands forcing their way out toward him.

The drunks still awake in the cells had gone quiet for the brief duration of Blaine’s work, but now were snouting and cheering as if they expected to be freed. The new lot that had shielded him had begun to back their way down the rank corridor when McCracken showed the gun he’d lifted off the first guard. In his other hand was a wad of keys.

The drunks slowed, then halted, disappointment obvious on their features. Blaine opened the less crowded of the two cells and herded them in. His original plan had been to throw the downed officers in here as well, but the mad eyes of the occupants dictated otherwise. There was a third cell, unoccupied for the moment, and he quickly dragged them into it after locating the proper key. Stripping the clothes off the larger of the two officers and donning them in place of his own was next on the list. The drunks had bunched close together in both cells to capture angles that let them watch. Those with the best view cheered Blaine when he stripped off his clothes and booed him when he put the guard’s on instead. By far the loudest reaction he got came when he exited the third cell tightening his gun belt and moved back down the corridor. The drunks shouted their anger at his not releasing them, then busied themselves with seeing if they could probe through the bars of the third cell to find purchase on the downed policemen.

McCracken reached the staircase at 11:49. Timing was of the utmost importance now if he was to reach Johnny Wareagle ahead of the explosions, and a significant obstacle remained to be overcome: gaining entry to the second-floor area of the jail where Johnny was being held meant retracing his steps up the staircase and passing right through the building’s front area.

He mounted the steps quickly and used his keys to unlock the door. He fixed his cap lower over his forehead and slid outward. Not hesitating, he turned right and walked past the wall-less main room, which was busy with activity. Another stairway that would take him to the second level, where Johnny was being kept, lay straight ahead. The building’s ancient design did not allow for monitoring stations on every floor. There were just lines of claustrophobic cells with heavy wooden, windowless doors. Patrolling guards, yes, but no central station to bypass.

11:51…

McCracken rushed up the stairs and waited briefly at the top to see if a guard was patrolling the floor. The rattling clip-clop of boot heels alerted him to the presence of one before his eyes recorded the steady pace of the man heading his way on his pass. Blaine pressed his shoulders against the alcove wall and waited. When the guard had turned to go back the other way, he pounced. The man felt only a slight twinge in his neck before consciousness was stripped from him. Blaine headed on past the small room he had met Johnny in that afternoon to the cell where Wareagle was being held.

“This is your wake-up call, Indian,” he said, turning the key in the lock. “Time to rise and shine.”

McCracken pushed the heavy door open.

“Let’s get a move—”

But the cell was empty.

Johnny was gone.

Blaine fought against panic. The unexpected was nothing new to him. The problem in this case continued to be time.

11:53…

His fiery distraction would begin in seven minutes; if he didn’t have Wareagle in tow by that time, it would be for naught. Obviously Blaine’s presence here that afternoon had raised eyebrows among the jail’s officials. They would have moved Wareagle to a more secure location, probably under personal guard on the third floor, because that would create the greatest distance to cover in the event escape was attempted. With time his enemy, and his explosive distraction no longer enough to ensure success, Blaine needed something else, something more.

The cell doors around him held the answer. Blaine started at the cell next to Johnny’s old one and unlocked it with the keys lifted from the guard in the basement. He pounded on the door before thrusting it open, then moved onto the next one across the hall. He was working on the fifth door when the first of those inmates he’d freed emerged tentatively into the corridor. They regarded each other with confusion and took their first steps cautiously, as if still bound imperceptibly to their cells. But the bonds were quick to come off.

McCracken had opened over a dozen doors when the first complement of those he had freed surged by him. They kept their distance, unsure and skeptical of his motives. One stopped and smiled at him. Blaine smiled back and made his own way down the hall toward the group waiting.

11:57.

“Vamos,” he told them, followed by, “Adeus.”

“Muito obrigado,” one of them said.

Blaine flew up the stairs to the third floor and pressed himself against the side wall. He peered around the doorway to find a trio of guards standing rigid before a single cell at the very end of the corridor. He gazed at his watch.

11:58…The waiting was interminable, seconds passing like hours before his eyes.

Come on, he urged the freed prisoners on the level beneath him. Come on!

He heard the shouts and screams first, pouring up the stairwell from ground level. The wailing, old-fashioned bell alarm came next. He made himself wait a few seconds more, wanting to seize the moment when indecision and fear on the part of Johnny’s guards was at its peak.

Blaine moved an instant before his watch showed 11:59. He moved down the corridor — not charging but backpedaling fearfully — trembling gun aimed at nothing. Johnny’s guards, who had already been looking that way, drew their guns as well.

“This way!” Blaine screamed at them. “Hurry! They’re coming! We’re under attack!”

McCracken had stopped his surge twenty feet from the door, pressed up against the wall as if for cover. The alarm’s bells burned his ears, shouts and screams occasionally rising above them.

“Now!” Blaine yelled behind him.

Johnny’s guards came forward, slow at first but then in an all-out rush. Blaine lunged into the hall in front of their charge and leveled his pistol, combat-style, back toward the stairway. The guards accepted him in that instant, and an instant was all he needed.

Two charged to his left, and he went for those first, a forearm launched into the face of one while a kick found the groin of the other. The men crumpled as they stood, the final guard turning in time to see them hit the floor, but not in time to swing his gun toward the figure whirling at him in a blur. McCracken separated the three guards from their weapons — in case they came to faster than expected — and rushed toward the cell they’d been guarding.

Only thirty seconds remained until midnight when he pounded on the door.

“Guess who, Indian?” Blaine asked, already trying to work the first of his keys into the lock.

“Hello, Blainey.”

“Damn,” McCracken muttered when the final key failed to do the job. “Hold tight, Johnny.”

The door was too heavy and the lock too solid to shoot out. His only hope was that one of the guards he’d felled had the right key on his person. Blaine rushed back to the center of the corridor. The man he had kicked in the groin was twisting on the floor, only semiconscious. A single key dangled from his belt. McCracken reached down and snatched it.

Boom!..Boom!..Boom!

The first explosions sounded just as he jammed the key into the lock on Johnny’s cell. The very structure of the building seemed to tremble, walls shedding dust. Blaine shoved the door open; Wareagle was standing in wait, his wrist and leg irons lying in pools on the floor behind him.

“I always figured Houdini was an Indian,” McCracken said over the shrilling alarm bell.

Boom!…Boom!..Boom!

The next series in the parking lot sounded just as they started down the corridor.

“The hellfire, Blainey.”

“Literally tonight, Indian. Gonna be plenty of pissed-off cops when the time comes to drive home.”

Between the explosions and alarm came the sounds of sporadic gunfire. A stand was being made by police against the scourge of escaping prisoners. Blaine signaled Johnny to stop when they reached the staircase. His eyes were glued to his watch.

“More, Blainey?”

“Just a little. Right about…now!”

On cue there was a final Boom! that was muffled like distant thunder. The lights around them flickered and died.

“Figured we could use a little bit of insurance,” Blaine explained, “so I wired the pole running the lines of juice into the building.”

In the darkness he could feel Johnny smile. “Take their eyes and you take their guns.”

“That’s the idea.”

They sped down the staircase and then descended the last stretch of the way toward the main floor. A dull haze of emergency lighting shone through the black. The loss of power had cut the alarm, and the only sounds were the shouts and screams coming from police struggling to regain control.

“Close your eyes, Indian.”

“Blainey?”

“One final surprise…”

McCracken’s hand emerged from his pocket with a phosphorus flare he had constructed that afternoon, plastic pipe tubing filled with three separate kinds of powder. He touched his lighter to the rawhide strip fuse and tossed it ahead, near the midway point between them and the door. The tubing struck the floor and rolled briefly before igniting in hot, lingering flashbulb-bright intensity. Men rubbed their eyes, opened them again to sight echoes of dazzling white.

Blaine and Johnny used the temporary freeze to rush through the main door. Outside, the parking lot was a shambles. Fragments of the cars Blaine had wired littered a pavement dominated by the flaming wrecks. The flames carved into the night and stole the cover of darkness away. Everywhere freed prisoners rushed for the fence.

“Time to get ourselves a taxi,” Blaine said as they lunged down the stairs leading from the entryway.

As if on cue, a series of police cars sped through the gate with sirens wailing. They slammed to a halt while Johnny and Blaine sought cover behind one of the vehicles untouched by the explosions. The idea occurred to them at the same time, and, without exchanging a single word or gesture, they moved for the car parked at the end of the new row once it was abandoned. By the time its previous occupants reached the jail, their car was screeching its way back out the gate.

“Next stop the Amazon, Indian, “Blaine said.

Chapter 5

Patty Hunsecker awoke with the wind. The vertical blinds drawn over her open windows flapped wildly, rattling together like change shaken inside a piggy bank. It was a hot wind, but throwing back the covers Patty found that she was freezing. Cold sweat matted her blouse to her flesh. The cuffs of her jeans had crept up her ankles and now cut tightly into her calves. She was shivering. The nightmare had come again, the bulk of it already lost to memory, with only the residue left behind:

A dark sedan crashing through the guardrail and plunging over the cliff. In the front seat the Hunsecker’s female Japanese house servant and her father’s business assistant, Shimada, flailing frantically with the wheel. In the back her father’s face glued against the window. Her father was waving at Patty.

Waving good-bye.

Patty climbed out of bed and nearly tripped on the boots discarded at its foot. She did not remember taking them off, did not remember giving herself up to sleep, either. She had been in the study earlier — her father’s study — lost in the pile of press clippings that littered the desk. Clippings accumulated over the past day and a half that had turned her grief to terror since the funeral on Friday, the day after a Thanksgiving that left her nothing to give thanks for.

“Thank you for seeing me on a Sunday,” she had told Captain Harold Banyan of the Los Angeles Police Department that afternoon.

“You said it was urgent, Miss Hunsecker. I knew your father. For what’s it worth, I thought he was a great man.”

“It may be worth a lot, Captain.”

It was then that Banyan noticed the manila envelope Patty was clutching beneath her arm. He had seen pictures of her in the stories that cluttered the news about Phillip Hunsecker’s tragic passing, but they did not do her justice. Her body was athletic and shapely, her skin bronzed, and her blond hair cut stylishly short.

“I’d like you to take a look at these,” Patty said as she unclasped the envelope and handed a small stack of photocopied press clippings across the desk to Banyan. “I’ve got more, but these are the most clear-cut.”

Banyan had begun fingering through them. “Clear-cut what, Miss Hunsecker?”

“Examples, Captain Banyan. My father isn’t the only one, Captain. In the past five days, nine men like him have been killed; three others have disappeared. Five of the nine perished in ‘accidents,’ as well.”

Banyan looked up from skimming the tear sheets. “By ‘like him,’ you mean…”

“Rich, powerful, influential. I spent most of yesterday in the library, going through out-of-town newspapers. I didn’t get through them all. There could be more.”

“More victims, you mean?”

Patty nodded.

“Then you’re suggesting…”

“That my father and the others were murdered, Captain Banyan. That the deaths are connected, part of a pattern, some sort of conspiracy.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

“Miss Hunsecker?”

“You haven’t read the tear sheets. You just skimmed them. I made those copies for you. I’ve got another set. You can read them in detail and call me back when you’re finished. If you want, I can wait out in—”

“Miss Hun — Can I call you Patty?”

“I’ve been calling you captain,” she answered, trying for a smile.

“Patty, what led you to the library on this…search?”

“A feeling.”

“That’s all?”

Patty swallowed hard. “The skid marks at the scene of the accident. Something about them was all wrong. Something suggested that…”

“Go on.”

“Suggested that my father’s car was forced off the road.”

“Our forensics unit spent half a day on the scene and disagrees with that conclusion.”

“I’m well aware of that, Captain.”

Banyan smiled curtly at her. “Your specialty is the sea — the ocean — is it not?”

“It was.”

“Then I would say you were stepping out of line to make conclusions better reached — or not reached — by the police.”

“If I hadn’t found out about the others, I would accept that judgement.”

Again Banyan fingered through the tear sheets. “Yes. And was your father acquainted with any of these others?”

“I’m sure he met a few of them.”

“Any business dealings, political contacts?”

“Not that I know of.”

“And do you have any reason to believe that these same men bear any direct connection to one another?”

“Besides the obvious, no.”

“And just what is the obvious?”

“Their stature. The kind of influence they wielded.”

“That’s not a connection, Miss Hunsecker, it’s a fact. You’re trying to suggest to me that your father was a victim of some mammoth conspiracy. But there’s no evidence to support that conclusion.”

Banyan extended the tear sheets back across the desk. Patty’s hands stayed on her lap.

“Just read them, Captain, in detail. Call the investigating officers in some of the other cities. See if they have any suspicions. That’s all I ask.”

Banyan pulled the tear sheets back toward him and let them flop to his desk. “I’ll call you, Patty. Give me a few days.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

But Patty knew a few days weren’t going to make any difference, nor would a few weeks, or even a few months. Banyan wasn’t buying into the story; he probably wouldn’t make a single phone call. She walked out of the building feeling even more alone than she had while she stood with her younger brothers on either side of her at the funeral seventy-two hours before. She was responsible for them now; they were hers to raise and no one else’s.

Your specialty is the sea — the ocean — is it not?

It was, indeed, and, God, how she missed it now, as she closed the windows and locked them. She had come back one year before to bury her mother — who’d succumbed after a long battle with cancer Patty didn’t even know she was waging. The news of her mother’s death had reached Patty in the Biminis, where she had started work on a new project with a new boat, the Runaway II. The ocean was her one great love; she had foresaken all else for it. She had left her family, left college, left the family’s three Southern California houses to pursue a love that had been all-consuming.

She was so isolated that her family hadn’t even known how to reach her. If she hadn’t come back to port to resupply, Patty never would have known until her mother was long buried. She remembered the funeral, the sight of her two younger brothers, virtual strangers to her, held under either of her father’s arms, gazing at her with unquestioning love, in search of reassurance she could not give them. She resolved then to forsake her life on the sea and stay with them, be the sister they never really had now that their mother was gone. The ocean could go on without her, and maybe her brothers could, too. But the issue was one of need.

Her mother’s funeral had brought back sharp memories of how close she had once come to death herself. She had nearly perished with the first Runaway after she and it had been commandeered by a man Patty hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since. Standing there at her mother’s funeral, she had let herself imagine that Blaine McCracken was there by her side, offering comfort.

Of course, he wasn’t; they hadn’t even spoken since he had left her in a naval hospital on Guam six months before her mother’s funeral. Patty had not called her parents during her own two-week-long hospital stay. McCracken did, though, and they flew out, insisting she let them help pay to reoutfit her. Patty stubbornly argued she would rely on grants; only when the folly of this became obvious did she accept what she insisted had to be a loan.

It had been her father who convinced her to return to the sea after her mother’s funeral. They both had to get on with their lives, he told her, and she wouldn’t be doing herself any good lingering where she wouldn’t be happy. Her younger brothers were disappointed, but they understood. Besides, Shimada was there, and she was infinitely more capable of managing the household — as she had effectively done since Patty had been a child.

Shimada.

She had been born during World War II, in one of the Japanese internment camps in California. Touched by her story, Phillip Hunsecker had hired her as housekeeper and governess in 1970, when Patty was six. The relationship between the two of them had been strong from the very start. Shimada immediately christened Patty Hana-shan, which meant Flower. As Patty grew older, Shimada was drawn increasingly into Phillip Hunsecker’s business affairs, eventually becoming his administrative assistant in addition to her continuing duties in the household. When Patty’s mother had died, Shimada had been typically humble, willing even to miss the funeral so she could get the house in order for the many guests who would be coming after it was over.

Patty was in port when news of the accident had reached her, barely a week before. Details were sketchy at that point, and she found a glimmer of hope in that sketchiness. The glimmer was extinguished the instant she reached home. Both her father and Shimada had been killed instantly, their bodies burned beyond recognition. Her brothers were staying with friends. Patty realized how sad it was they were now orphans. With a chill she realized, she was, too.

She brought them back to her favorite of the family’s houses in Laurel Canyon, insisting that was the best way to help them get on with their lives. She was done with the sea. The boys needed her, and here she would stay. Custody problems were inevitable and still forthcoming. The cushion of shock was still delaying matters, and Patty was grateful for that much.

Her arms wrapped about her body, she walked out of her room and into the hallway. Her bare feet rebelled against the coldness of the bare wood floor, and she moved quickly onto the Oriental runner that covered its center. She peered into the rooms of both her brothers and then decided to go down to the kitchen to make some coffee. But the downstairs was cold and dark, and to get there she had to pass her father’s study.

Inside it a single desk lamp burned over her mounting collection of tear sheets and photocopies. She did not remember leaving the lamp on. She did not remember leaving the study in favor of plunging into bed without undressing.

Intending only to switch off the light, she entered the study and walked to the desk. The reading material spread over it clutched at her again, she sank into the chair and began paging through the clutter of papers once more.

What was the connection between these men?

Something had to hold her father and the other victims together. They were being killed for a reason — and at least some hint of that reason had to lie here, in these papers. She had filled half the pages of a yellow legal pad with notes based on her reading. Tonight she would make notes on the notes.

It was like sailing into a head wind. She wasn’t getting anywhere.

What would Blaine McCracken have done?

Her eyes fell on the phone. She’d considered dialing the number he had given her so often these past few days that she could see it embossed on her eyelids every time she tried to sleep. But what was she going to tell him if he answered? What made her think his response would be any different from Banyan’s?

I’ve got to find something to tell him, something that will make him — make all of them — believe, she thought now.

Patty flipped her second pad open to a chart she had been making with the victims’ vital statistics. Nothing there that even suggested a connection. Different hometowns, different birth places, different colleges, different ways each had made his fortune, different birthdays as well, she quipped to herself.

Then something made her go back to that final column. Birth dates…Birth dates…

A chill shook her before she was even halfway down the list, an icy chill just like the one that had awakened her earlier.

Well, I’ll be damned, she thought. I’ll be damned!

“A minor problem has arisen, Kami-san.”

Takahashi looked up from his desk to see Tiguro Nagami standing before him. He hadn’t even heard his subordinate enter the study.

“Speak, Tiguro.”

“The daughter of one of the victims has been to the police. She has apparently caught on to the pattern of deaths.”

“She couldn’t have.”

“The police said as much.”

“Then why must I know this?”

“The possibility that she will make inquiries in other arenas is very real, Kami-san. One of these might provide a more willing ear.”

“Can you monitor the situation?”

Nagami nodded.

“If she persists, Tiguro, order her elimination. But don’t use one of our six specialists.” The vaguest hint of a smile crossed Takahashi’s lips. “No sense throwing off their timetable, is there?”

Chapter 6

McCracken mopped his brow yet again as the black waters of the Amazon slid by beneath him.

“Next year, Indian, remind me to choose Club Med.”

Wareagle was hefting a long, thick log to help steer their boat clear of the shallows. Their pilot, Luis, had warned of the shallows just before finishing his last bottle of whiskey. That had been two hours back, after they had turned down the frighteningly calm trunk river that appeared on no map.

“You sure this is the right way, Johnny?” Blaine had asked.

“According to the directions passed on to me, yes.”

“Wouldn’t happen to have a map, would you?”

“The Tupis speak in terms of landmarks.”

“What happens when we hit the jungle?”

“We follow the signs of the land.”

“What about the spirits? Where are they this time? Somewhere air-conditioned, I’d bet.”

Wareagle was not amused. “The words they speak filter through the light. The heart of darkness we are entering makes it difficult to hear.”

Now only Johnny’s massive strength pushing off of the bottom allowed the drunken Luis to steer the rickety ship that had been their home for over a day. After escaping from Casa do Diabo, Johnny and Blaine had driven straight to a small airfield outside of São Paulo. From there, unregistered flights were available to virtually anywhere in the country if the price was right. Fortunately Blaine had enough money left to make sure it was. Most of the men he usually dealt with weren’t fond of credit cards, so Blaine always traveled with large reserves of cash stored within secret compartments of his carry-on bag.

The plane took them to Manaus, a sprawling river port with a population of almost a million that rose from the densest part of the Amazon jungle. A combination of high-rise buildings and older stucco structures dwarfed in their midst, Manaus attracts a huge tourist population, primarily because it is a free port. Bargains in electronic merchandise abound, televisions and stereos sold out of warehouse lots from piles of boxes stacked to the ceiling. The port section is cluttered with hucksters and fishermen selling their wares from the docks, boasting of incredible bargains and trading barbs about freshness.

Upon arriving early Sunday morning, Blaine and Johnny filtered among the streams of humanity in no mood to linger too long. The need for a boat brought them to the port section, but few were available. They opted for Luis’s because he was lying drunk in a hammock and asked not a single question after being stirred. He didn’t even inquire where they were going until they were a mile out in the Amazon. Then his questions were answered by the money Blaine flashed before him.

The early hours of the voyage were almost pleasant. The waters of the Amazon are black due to the dissolving of humic acid, which repels insects and mosquitos. But as morning grew into afternoon, a stifling humidity took over. McCracken sat on the deck dripping in hot sweat that drenched even his hair and beard.

The boat motored easily as Johnny’s course took them into a maze of uncharted connecting waterways that ran green with the lifeblood of the countryside. With the coming of night came the onset of distinct unease on Blaine’s part. They could not have risked carrying weapons through Manaus, and none were available at any of the markets, except for ancient hunting rifles and shotguns. McCracken opted for the best he could find of the latter, a pump-action job that had seen better days. That and a box of ammunition were all they had on their side against the Spirit of the Dead.

“We are close now, Blainey,” Wareagle assured him, joining Blaine in the bow, where he was keeping a careful watch on the bottom for sudden rocks. The morning had dawned friendly, but already the dripping humidity was starting to choke the air.

“You going on strike, Indian?”

“Our boatman says the shallows have ended.”

Luis, behind the wheel, burped.

“And you trust him?”

“He has lived his life on the river, just as the Tupis have lived theirs in the jungle. He knows the waters as well as they know the land. Another twenty minutes and we will anchor.”

The resolve on Johnny’s face was sharp and keen. McCracken had seen it before, in other jungles, as other battles were looming.

They dropped anchor on schedule, and Luis helped them unload their packs; then Blaine instructed him to wait for their return. Luis gazed about him, not looking happy.

“Quando volta?”

Blaine gave him his best guess. “Amanhã.”

“Não sei,” the boatman said, resisting Blaine’s orders.

“Vehna ca, por favor,” Blaine told him. And then, in English, “Come on. I’ve got something here for you.”

Luis’s eyes gleamed when Blaine produced the contents of a sack not yet unloaded: three bottles of decent whiskey he’d purchased at the port market before they’d set out.

“Muito bem,” Luis thanked him. “Muito obrigado!”

“Then you’ll be here when we get back?”

“Oh, absolutely,” the boatman replied, cuddling up to the whiskey as if it were a long-lost friend.

The brush of the Amazon Basin was like nothing Blaine had ever experienced before. It was wholly unique, a world unto itself. There was no path to follow, just trees to slide between and bushes to shove back. The feeling that he might well be the first person ever to step where he was stepping was new and fresh to him. The entire jungle was alive, even more steaming than the water, with no breeze to cool the drenching sweat that poured off him.

Wareagle led the way, at first clearing their path with a machete. The deeper they plunged into the jungle, however, the shorter his swipes became, as if he were reluctant to disturb nature’s delicate balance. Vines and broad leaves scraped at Blaine’s face with the tenacity of iron. More than once he felt some reptilian creature slithering about his feet and feared that it might be a deadly bushmaster snake ready to inject its lethal venom into him.

The jungle about him was alive with constant animal sounds, some high-pitched and loud, others barely more than a chirp. Above, only slight rays of direct light were able to penetrate the thick canopy of trees that formed a shroud over the jungle. This part of the Amazon had thus far been spared the ruinous mining and senseless stripping of the land for profit by bandeirantes, the Brazilian backwoodsmen.

The jungle smelled fresh, too, in spite of the humidity; not rank like Southeast Asia. You hated Nam before you even knew you were there because the air stank. Here the woods smelled like a fresh salad and were blessed with an incredible diversity of plant and animal species that breathed vitality into the scene. Blaine dared ask himself if war might have been the difference in Nam. Perhaps it was the smell of hate more than anything that sickened him even in memory. Here there was no hate, only life; this land supplied one-third of the world’s oxygen.

Wareagle followed the trail that was invisible to Blaine until they reached a large clearing that contained stray piles of wood and thick leaves.

“A tribe slept here last night,” Johnny said. “Most of them set out at dawn, the rest followed closely behind to provide cover against pursuit. They were restless. Something happened that frightened them.”

“You didn’t tell me the Tupis were nomadic.”

“Because they never were before.”

They came upon the encampment two hours before sunset. Wareagle pointed out perimeter guards so well camouflaged that Blaine could barely discern them even when staring directly at their positions. The Indian then showed him where to silently wait until he returned with safe passage assured. Under the circumstances, the sight of a “white-face” might scare the Tupi guards. Their arrows and blow darts might not be as formidable as machine-gun fire, but death didn’t know the difference.

Blaine watched Johnny disappear into the jungle and did as he was told. One minute dragged into another and he began to ask himself how much longer he would wait before impatience led him to make his own move. The next moments passed as slowly as any he could ever recall; he had very nearly made up his mind to follow in Johnny’s steps when Wareagle’s frame emerged from the brush, followed by a pair of Tupi warriors.

“We were expected, Blainey,” Wareagle announced, bidding him to rise. “They knew I would be coming.”

“What’d you tell them about me?”

“That you are a great white warrior who rescued me so I might rescue them. I called you cheinama, which in their language means a stranger who is a friend.”

“Thanks for the recommendation,” Blaine said.

The Tupis had been fortunate enough to find a rare valley in the Amazon Basin. As McCracken hiked down the slope to the hub of activity, he noted it was a uniquely defensible area. By the size of the branches the Tupi braves were hefting, and the way they were being stacked, he also noted that the tribe was not actually building a settlement.

They were building a fortress.

The bulk of the living quarters were being erected a story or more in the air upon sturdy tree branches linked together with tied-down logs. The construction was lean-to style and, once completed, would be accessible only by dangling vines easily pulled up to deny entry. The building of similar structures was underway closer to the rim of the valley, although these were clearly guard towers. The Tupis were developing their own early warning system.

“Looks like they’re digging in,” Blaine commented.

“With good reason. The chief is waiting for us.”

The chief was seated cross-legged in the center of the valley, a vantage point from which he would survey all ongoing work. He was an ancient man, with white hair tied in a ponytail and a mask of wrinkles covering the coppery flesh of his face. He might have been a hundred or seventy, but Blaine could see that the muscles of his wrists and hands were those of a younger man, at least one who had never stopped using them. They protruded from a tribal shawl colored in a simple pattern with a dominant shade of wheat.

The chief spoke to Wareagle without looking at McCracken.

“He bids you welcome,” Johnny translated, “and says he can tell he is in the presence of a great manitou.”

“Tell him the pleasure is all mine.”

Before Johnny could do so, the chief spoke again.

“O Memeka bu?”

“He wishes to know what tribe you belong to,” Johnny translated.

“Tell him my own.”

“Omei,” Johnny repeated to the old man.

The chief laughed and said something softly to Johnny.

“He says he knew that, Blainey.”

“Iti omoi reima.”

“He says you are a strong man.”

“Tell him thanks — and ask him what the hell is going on here!”

“Nefoteo nia?”

Wareagle waited patiently for the chief to finish before translating.

“He says they are digging in here to make a stand. He says there is no sense in running because the Spirit of the Dead will find them…like it found them last night.”

Johnny waited for the chief to complete his thought before continuing his translation.

“Blainey, he says two boys were found missing from that clearing we came upon at dawn this morning. He says there were no tracks to indicate they wandered off and no tracks to indicate anyone had come for them. They simply disappeared. “

“Thanks to this Spirit of the Dead?”

Wareagle nodded grimly. “The chief believes it to be a demon capable of appearing and disappearing as it desires. He says it was drawn up from the underworld one full moon ago by a Gift Giver still in touch with the Forgotten Times.”

“In which case the defenses being erected here will prove woefully inadequate.”

“They must make a stand, Blainey. Whatever is killing their people must be made to show itself where their warriors will at least have a chance.”

“Ask him if any of his people have seen the Spirit of the Dead.”

Wareagle obliged, and the chief shook his head methodically before responding.

“He says all that has been seen is the shape of the hatred the enemy leaves,” Wareagle translated. “The enemy sucks the life out of the land, out of the world, and the result is a hollow spot, an empty spot. It is into this hollow spot that the Spirit of the Dead disappears after its work is finished.”

The old man spoke again as soon as Johnny had finished speaking.

“There is more, Blainey. He says signs of the Green Coats were found in their search for the missing boys.”

“Meaning soldiers?”

“Seven of them, their steps orderly and precise.”

“Ben Norseman,” Blaine replied, recalling his meeting with the Green Beret colonel in the lobby of the Caesar Park.

“They do not seem interested in his tribe, but they are out there, too.”

Just then a panting brave rushed up to the chief and sat next to him, whispering. The old man listened calmly, then turned to look up at Wareagle and spoke softly.

“He says the missing boys have been found,” Wareagle translated. “He wants us to come.”

The boys’ bodies swayed in the breeze, suspended from the tree by vines tied around their throats. The instrument of death, though, had been something much worse.

They had been disemboweled while still alive.

Large, jagged holes had been sliced in their abdomens, the contents drained a bit at a time. The pain would have been enormous, and much of it was still frozen on their faces. Blood from their mouths and noses had dripped down to their chests like paint running down a wall. Blaine kept his eyes on it to distract himself from the holes ripped where their stomachs had been. He kept to a distance where the smell was less intense. “What did this, Johnny? What the hell did this?”

Wareagle had ventured closer, eyes cold as marbles. He stared at the corpses and swiped at the flies that had clustered about. The boys’ toes dangled two feet off the ground, so Johnny was looking directly into their dead eyes.

“The vines are knotted in a way that would not bring on suffocation,” he said, eyes lowering. “The initial stomach cuts were made with a sharp object, a knife perhaps, so the skin could be parted and stripped back. The contents could then be pulled out.” He turned to McCracken. “By hand.”

“Jesus Christ….”

Wareagle had leaned over the stinking pile of the corpses’ insides. Blaine drew up even with him, while the chief and Tupi warriors kept their distance.

“What about tracks?”

Wareagle was on his knees now, sliding his callused palms across the ground. “Nothing from the time of these killings. Much from after.”

“I’m listening.”

“Seven men wearing U.S. combat boots.”

“Norseman,” Blaine muttered. “Ben and his goons must have come in to hunt something down.” He looked at Wareagle. “Our Spirit of the Dead maybe.”

Wareagle looked up. “The Green Coats came in from the northeast. I can follow their tracks. They may bring us closer to what we have come to find.”

McCracken gazed up at the last of the day’s light. “Not without sun. We’ll spend the night with the Tupis, help them make their stand, and leave come morning.”

“Something might come before that.”

“Save us a trip, Indian.”

Chapter 7

The Tupi warriors patrolled the valley’s perimeter in positions shown them by Wareagle. Blaine hung back through it all; not yet fully accepted by the Tupis, he focused his energies in other directions. Perimeter guards out of contact with one another were too vulnerable to attack, too easy to eliminate one at a time, so Wareagle’s plan had them patrolling in concentric circles that meant one brave would pass another every hundred yards. Still, this left too many easily breached holes in the perimeter. Hell, just the night before the Spirit of the Dead, as the Tupis called it, had made off with two boys without leaving any trace. Couldn’t dare leave it any opening at all in view of that.

What the braves needed was a good set of walkie-talkies. Lacking that, Blaine would have to make do with what was available. He glanced at the tribal chief, still seated in the center of the valley, a small fire burning before him. McCracken smiled.

Thirty minutes later fourteen fires were going around the rim of the valley. Every three minutes the braves tending them would drop a special ash made from tree bark into the flames to produce a noxious white smoke. The white smoke would serve as the all’s-well signal to the spotters in the valley. A missed interval would spell trouble, and the tribe would know where to concentrate their forces.

Wareagle paced into the black hours of the morning. The jungle was louder then; animal and bird sounds seemed to travel farther in the darkness. Blaine approached him with the pump action propped on his shoulder. Johnny regarded the weapon with apparent disdain.

“Come on, Indian, whatever this Spirit of the Dead turns out to be, it’s not bulletproof.”

“But neither does it fear that bullets can stop it.”

McCracken sniffed the air. Maybe, just maybe, a new scent sifted through. The beginnings of something rancid and spoiled. He shook his imagination away.

“We’ve been through this before.”

“Not the hellfire, Blainey.”

“Why not? Guns didn’t always work against Charlie, either. Waving that big M-16 made you feel invincible until you stepped on a mine or a trap or got hit when one of them popped out of a tunnel.”

“The Black Hearts did what they had to. What we are facing here does what it likes.”

McCracken had to bring up what had forced its way into his mind. “You felt something else back where we found those boys, Indian. You didn’t say anything about it, but I could tell.”

Wareagle smiled. “Perhaps it is you the spirits have chosen to speak through this time.”

“I’d welcome anything that helps get us out of here alive, including the whole truth of what you know.”

“Feel, Blainey.”

“Same thing, Indian.”

Bursts of white smoke filled the air along the rim of the valley as another three-minute interval passed.

“The Spirit of the Dead enjoys what it does,” Wareagle told him softly. “It is propelled by a need to kill like an animal that will starve if it doesn’t hunt. The pain and suffering of its victims are its food.”

“Then we’d better find it before it finds us.”

“The daytime belongs to us.”

“So long as we make it through the night.”

McCracken half expected Wareagle to return from a sweep of the perimeter at dawn with a report that all the Tupi braves had been killed during the final three-minute interval. But the look on the big Indian’s face told him all was well.

“The night passed without incident,” he reported. “No sign of the Spirit of the Dead, Blainey, but evidence of the Green Coats was found to the south of us.”

“Norseman?”

“Still seven men, heavily weighed down by equipment and gear. They could have entered the valley at anytime, but chose not to, almost as if, as if…”

“As if what?”

“They saw the valley as a trap.”

“To catch what, Indian? Seems pretty obvious now they’re after the same thing we are. The question is why.”

“The answer may lie only in following the trail they have left us.”

For the better part of the morning, Johnny followed the trail the soldiers had taken from the north through the jungle. The sticky heat of the afternoon sun was just beginning to make itself felt when Johnny stopped and stood pole straight. Blaine could feel the Indian’s energy emanating outward like a strobe light, pins and needles dancing about his flesh and turning into daggers as they took to the air.

“What’s wrong, Johnny?”

No reply.

“Johnny?”

Silence.

“Johnny…”

Wareagle turned. “We’re close, Blainey. There’s something up there, beyond those trees.”

They started on again, Johnny moving like a big jungle cat. Where he walked, Blaine figured, there would be no trail, either. Johnny parted a huge thicket of overbrush and waited for Blaine to draw even. McCracken looked where Johnny was pointing and found himself gazing at the impossible.

There, in the thick of the jungle, was a massive building!

Just as quickly as his eyes had focused on the structure, it fluttered from his vision like a mirage in the desert, thanks to its sloping construction and shading. The lines and colors flowed perfectly with the jungle, as if construction had been carried out without disturbing a single tree or bush. Johnny led the way closer; a tall steel-link fence came into focus, camouflaged with brush that virtually swallowed it. None of this belonged here, yet here, undeniably, it was. Perhaps it held the answer to whatever was happening in the jungle.

McCracken looked at Wareagle. “What is this place, Indian?”

“I feel death, Blainey — more terrible than even you and I have experienced. We lived in the hellfire, and it lived in us. The land retained its life in spite of the death we brought to it. But what lies before us is nothing but black, a charred symbol on the crest of man.”

“You’re saying this is some kind of scientific installation?”

Wareagle looked at him. “The birthplace of the Spirit of the Dead.”

Blaine could feel Wareagle’s tension growing. “What’s wrong, Johnny?”

“No one is watching for us. There should be guards, but there are none anywhere.”

“If Norseman’s down here, he’s in charge. We’ll ask him about the oversight when we get the chance.”

Johnny stepped through the parted overbrush. “Walk lightly, Blainey. Follow my every step.”

McCracken did just that. They reached the steel fence; Johnny followed until he came to a gate. The lock was missing. The gate shifted slightly in the breeze. McCracken steadied his Remington pump.

They slid into a courtyard. On the uphill grade that led to the building, McCracken expected guards to lunge out at every turn. But Johnny’s stoic stance ahead of him proved no one was on patrol in the area.

The courtyard ended at a set of rock steps chiseled into the hillside. The structure itself had been painted a bland shade of olive and was totally absorbed by the tangle of flora growing about and partially enveloping it. Finding such a perfect spot must have been difficult.

At the installation’s main entrance, Blaine’s eyes were drawn immediately to the dual cameras mounted over the door. The cameras did not move as they should have to follow their progress. The big Indian worked the latch. It gave, but the door resisted opening. A hefty shove forced it in far enough for them to enter.

Halfway inside it became clear what had been blocking then-way. A guard’s body had been propped against the door. His dead hand still gripped a machine gun. Blood drenched his midsection and the floor beneath him.

“Dead about eighteen hours,” Blaine said after inspecting the body. “A day at the outside.”

“He died barring the door, Blainey.”

Blaine observed the trail of blood that ran down a dimly lit corridor. “But he was killed inside.”

“Let’s head on,” Johnny said.

They walked side by side. The first door they came to was a monitoring station that served as the broadcast point for the many video cameras placed inside and out. Beneath the darkened monitors lay the bodies of three men in the same olive uniforms as the guard. They weren’t armed, but had been killed in a similarly messy fashion. McCracken had the same feeling here that had struck him the day before when he and Johnny had come upon the bodies of the two Tupi boys. He backed out of the monitoring room ahead of Wareagle.

In silence the two of them continued on their way. The narrow corridor gave way to a wider one. Four bodies in bloodied white lab coats lay crumpled at irregular intervals. Wareagle hesitated over the first; his face showed revulsion. Blaine could see it was a woman and got close enough to see something else.

Her face had been torn apart.

“Mother of God, Johnny! What the hell did this?”

Wareagle gave no answer. He continued on to an open door from which a burning smell emanated. McCracken followed him inside what had been a conference room. Its chairs had been upended to clear a space in the middle of a floor now covered with embers and ruined tile. Against one wall a series of file cabinets lay tipped over and emptied. Obviously their former contents had fueled the flames. McCracken noticed the blackened edge of a page fragment wedged beneath one of the fallen chairs and retrieved it while Johnny surveyed the rest of the damage.

“Anything, Blainey?” he asked. Blaine held the page up to the room’s single emergency light. “Too badly damaged to lift anything off. Except…Wait a minute…There is something. Not much, but…”

He was able to trace four bolder letters at the edge of the page, all that had not been lost to the fire. O-M-I–C.

“Mean anything to you, Blainey?” Wareagle asked from behind him.

“Not a fucking thing, Indian.”

They checked the room thoroughly, but could find no further fragments. Whoever had hit the complex had been thorough. Since the hit had come from the inside, though, the victims had quite obviously known their killers. He thought of Ben Norseman, wondering if for some reason this had been his work. This might not have been even Ben’s style, but there was no other logical explanation.

“I can’t believe Ben Norseman and his men would do something like this, Indian.”

“I don’t believe they did, Blainey. Outside the installation, their tracks indicated they returned here after the massacre, and they went out again.”

McCracken put it together in his mind.” After whatever was responsible, a trail that took them to the area of the Tupi camp before we made our appearance yesterday.”

“The camp was the Green Coats’ trap, Blainey, just as we suspected.”

“Only whatever was behind this massacre didn’t go for it.”

Wareagle’s stare grew distant. “The people here were killed from within,” he said.

“By what, Johnny?”

“Perhaps the installation can still tell us.”

They proceeded on in their investigation of the facility, but everywhere the results were the same. Equipment smashed. Hallways, rooms, and labs littered with bodies. The killing had been carried out with brutal efficiency, no one spared, no mercy given.

Wareagle looked to the walls as if they might provide some explanation. “The dead feeling present in the forest is strongest in the steps we have followed. It started here and spread outward.”

“Then there’s something we can be sure of, Johnny. To take all these people out so quickly and systematically, there had to be more than one of these Spirits of the Dead, whatever they turn out to be.” His eyes bulged in realization. “Meanwhile, Norseman must still be after them. Seven Green Berets armed to the teeth who eat nails for breakfast.” McCracken looked at his Remington. “Better shape than we’re in.”

“This complex would have been in better shape, too.”

Close scrutiny of a rear wall revealed to McCracken a hidden door behind which were stairs descending into the bowels of the complex. The air instantly felt chillier, and Blaine imagined a breeze sifting by him as he and Wareagle headed down. The lighting here was brighter, and the first door on the right was open. It led into an office of some kind. The remnants of a paper shredder’s work had overflowed from a trash can. Filing cabinet drawers were open down here as well. They had been yanked out and completely rifled.

“Looks like somebody was busy on this level, too, Indian. Destroying everything, by the looks of it.”

“Not everything, Blainey,” Wareagle said as one of his massive hands emerged from the depths of the shredder bin with a partially mangled leather report cover.

He showed it to Blaine so the title was clearly visible: THE OMICRON PROJECT.

McCracken recalled the letters O-M-I–C from the fragment on the floor above. Omicron, the fifteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. Slightly distracted now, he followed Wareagle onward. The next series of rooms all housed medical laboratories that still smelled faintly of alcohol. It was almost a refreshing scent, considering what they had been exposed to in the complex thus far. Lab bottles and test tubes lay in pieces everywhere, and they found another five corpses covered with debris. The glass doors of locked cabinets had been smashed, and their contents coated the floor with a carpet of slivers. The remains of needles could be seen, along with shards of thicker containers.

The final door on the hall led into what appeared to be a surgical unit. Much of the equipment in here had proved too bulky to destroy; what remained was a collection of machines of a sort Blaine had never seen before. “Imagers, I think,” he said, fingering one. “Used during microsurgery and for diagnosis.”

There were standard X-ray and CAT scan equipment as well, along with an operating table that was bolted to the floor. Dangling from all four of its sides were leather straps used to tie a patient down.

“Looks like the Omicron Project involved some pretty heavy medical R and D,” said McCracken. “Using human subjects.”

“Or what used to be human.”

“The only thing we know for sure about them is they’re gone. Let’s check out the next floor.”

They found the door at the end of this corridor to be different than the others: ten-inch slab steel with an electronic locking mechanism. The door had been opened and the mechanism shorted out to keep it that way. The air grew still colder as they descended to the complex’s second underground level. The corridor here was slightly shorter, and six doors thinly spaced apart opened on either side, with an equal number closed.

Blaine and Johnny’s inspection found them to be identical in every way: windowless cubicles complete with bed, chair, desk, and bureau. Joined to the near wall of each was a closet-sized bathroom. The door was of six-inch steel, with triple-thick hinges and an electronic locking mechanism. At ceiling level on the far wall was the protruding tip of a video surveillance lens.

“Not a great place to bring a date, under the circumstances,” said Blaine.

At the other end of the corridor rose another steel security door, this one featuring a thick glass slab at eye level.

“One-way glass,” Blaine said when he got there.

He pressed his eyes against the cold surface and peered through. It was a room much like the others, except it was bigger. The mattress had been shredded, the bed frame pulled apart at the joints, and the chest of drawers smashed into splinters. Blaine backed away so Johnny could get a better look, but even without the Indian’s spirits there to tell him, Blaine had the feeling that what had happened in the complex had started right here, behind this final door.

McCracken felt a tremor of fear pass through him. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation and sometimes was even welcome. But this time it lingered long enough to become distressing. He had the urge to find a radio and call for help, even though he knew the communications equipment would surely have been trashed.

“Forget the Spirit of the Dead,” he said to Johnny. “Looks like your friends the Tupis were up against a tribe of spirits.”

“Wakinyan is the Sioux word for them, Blainey.”

“Meaning?”

“Thunder beings, as savage as the storm itself. Merciless and indestructible.”

“Let’s hope not.”

Chapter 8

Tuesday’s dusk was barely three hours away when Blaine and Johnny emerged from the death-filled complex. In all they had found twenty-eight bodies, and even McCracken found himself shaking slightly.

“We must go, Blainey,” Wareagle announced, gazing ahead as if to sniff the air.

“Are you on their trail, Indian?”

“Yes and no.”

“No riddles. Please.”

“The only trail I can find is Norseman’s. Following it will take us to what we seek.”

Two miles back into the jungle, Wareagle crouched down and began working his fingers in the dirt. “Norseman?” Blaine asked.

“There’s more. Now part of another trail separate from his team’s. Fresher.”

“You’re saying he’s being followed?”

“Doubled back on is more like it.”

“How many?” McCracken asked, thinking of the dozen empty beds plus one they had found at the complex.

“I cannot tell. The evidence is slight, a slip, or perhaps one of them leaning over to do just what I’m doing now.”

“What you’re telling me is that you can’t find a single track belonging to whatever doubled back on Norseman?”

“For a creature in harmony with the land, walking without any trace is quite possible.”

“How far are they behind Norseman?”

“An hour, maybe two.”

“And us?”

“At least that much behind them.”

The jungle turned harsh and brutal from there, more humid and steaming than ever. The animal and bird sounds lost their harmonious ring. The heavy green foliage became tangled and more difficult to part. The route was hilly, irregular. Sudden drops occurred without notice. Branches scratched at McCracken’s flesh, and he flailed at them in frustration. Blaine couldn’t have said if fatigue and foreboding were to blame, or if the Wakinyan, as Johnny called them, had led Norseman’s team into these treacherous parts for a reason. In any case, this direction also led to the trunk river, where Luis would be waiting with their boat.

Night’s dark fingers were starting to spread across the sky when Johnny went rigid in his tracks.

“What’s wrong, Indian?”

“I heard something, Blainey.”

“Where?”

“Ahead of us…As much as a mile.”

“Any idea what?”

“I’m…not sure.”

Wareagle’s gait changed from there; now he moved like a great predator approaching prey that had its back turned. McCracken followed — and stopped abruptly behind Johnny when the big Indian froze, his arms flexed by his sides. “Sniff the air, Blainey.”

McCracken did. “I don’t — Wait a minute…Holy shit, you’re right!”

There was an unmistakable scent of gunpowder and sulphur-based explosives sifting through the wind.

“How far, Indian?”

“A half mile, at most.”

They covered that distance with little regard for the fact that the Wakinyan might be retracing their steps directly for them. Somehow Blaine felt even if the enemy knew they were here, it was not in their plans to do anything about it. That enemy had other priorities, which it would pursue with all haste.

The gunpowder smell grew into a full-fledged assault on their nostrils in the last dozen yards before they stepped into the clearing. They stopped dead still.

“Norseman,” Blaine muttered.

Or what was left of him. The seven ravaged corpses had been arranged in a trio of yard-deep chasms in the ground. Crosses made of branches had been jammed through the center of their chests, and the bodies had been left so that the crosses flowed in one precise row, so precise that only by changing his perspective could Blaine actually tell there was more than one.

Wareagle had moved further into the clearing, and bent to pick up discharged shells and empty clips on the ground. A bit deeper in he came upon discarded grenade pins and the tripod for an M-60 that lay nearby.

“How did this happen, Johnny?”

“Norseman’s men didn’t know they were being ambushed until it was too late. They responded with fire in all directions.”

“Then whatever they killed must have been hauled away.”

“I don’t believe they killed anything, or even hit anything. Their shots were wild. It is clear they had no targets, only sounds they were supposed to hear.”

“And then our friends from the complex rushed in and opened fire when they were facing in the wrong direction?”

Wareagle shook his head. “No, Blainey. All the shells here belong to Norseman’s men. Their bodies have no bullet wounds.”

“Wait a minute! You’re telling me seven Green Berets armed to the teeth couldn’t protect themselves from an unarmed attack?”

“I said no guns. I did not say unarmed.”

“How could they let the Wakinyan get so close? How could Ben Norseman’s men let those things parade right into the middle of a firefight and not take a single one out with them?”

“I can’t say, Blainey. There are no tracks leading in or out except for Norseman’s. Everything stops here.”

“Except us, Indian. The one good thing is that the Wakinyan left all the weapons behind. Virtually confirms the fact that they still don’t know we’re in the neighborhood.”

“Or suggests they want to give us a chance. More sport.”

“No, they want out. They hit the installation because they had somewhere else they wanted to be. Norseman was in their way. We’re not.”

“Not yet.”

McCracken moved to Ben Norseman’s corpse and stripped the pack from his back. Inside was a thick, oblong metallic cylinder about eighteen inches in length. As Johnny brought the cylinder closer to him, it seemed to tremble in his hands.

“Blainey?”

“It’s a fuel air explosive, Indian. Once activated it spreads a highly volatile gas over a wide radius for a predetermined period of time and then detonates. The gas ignites, and what you end up with is a huge air blast that leaves nothing behind.”

“Perhaps Norseman was out to set a trap of his own.”

“And then he never even got the explosive out of his pack. He would have tried, you know. When what was happening to him became clear, he would have used it.”

“Which means the Wakinyan didn’t give him the time.”

“Wouldn’t have taken much, so they must not have given him any,” Blaine said, and started away.

Stepping through the clearing, Blaine’s foot bumped something solid concealed beneath a bed of leaves. He pushed them aside and grasped a black electronic device. He found the On button and the screen jumped to life, showing a square grid dominated by a circle sweeping over it and then starting again, like a miniature radar screen.

“A range finder, Blainey?” McCracken nodded. “Five-hundred-yard radius, by the look of it. Norseman wasn’t taking any chances with his pursuit. High tech all the way. Doesn’t look like it helped much.”

“They knew he was coming. They knew where.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m not sure. The men were killed at close range — when they should have had plenty of warning as well as time. They had neither.”

McCracken’s eyes fell to the range finder. Its sweep continued, programmed, he assumed, to the specifications of what Norseman had been told he was hunting. The circle closed and started again, nothing showing in the grid.

“Coast looks clear, Indian.”

“Like it did to the Green Coats, Blainey.”

“How far to the boat?”

“Two hours in the dark. Easy level ground.”

McCracken was strapping the M-60 to his shoulder. “No reason to travel light then.”

The moon would have made for plenty of light, if its rays had been strong enough to push themselves through the dense cover of the jungle. In some places it might as well have been a darkened cave they were walking through. Occasionally slivers of moonbeams briefly illuminated a path that seemed unchanging.

In the darkest parts, the range finder’s sweeping red grid made for a grim luminescence. McCracken had been carrying it since they’d left the clearing and the corpses of Ben Norseman’s team. The thing made a slight beeping sound with each circular pass. Blaine figured they were still thirty minutes from the river. There were no guarantees Luis would have waited the extra time with the boat. Their best chance there lay in the hope that the whiskey had lasted longer than expected. If not—

Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep…

McCracken heard the range finder come alive in his hand. Suddenly its circular sweep was lined with red flashing dots clustered along a narrow sphere in the bottom left-hand grid.

Wareagle had already gone rigid.

“We’ve got company, Indian.”

“Where, Blainey?”

“Behind us to the south. Five hundred yards back, if I’m reading this right.”

McCracken stripped the M-60 machine gun from his shoulder. Damn thing weighed a ton. He’d handled a 7.62-mm Vulcan in the streets of Tehran, but not dead tired and in darkness so profound it was sure to confound his aim.

“No, Blainey,” said Wareagle.

“What?”

“Norseman and his men would have seen the same thing. They reached the clearing and made their stand because that is what the Wakinyan wanted. The Green Coats saw only what they were supposed to see.”

On the range finder, the blips had moved into the next grid.

“What are you saying?”

“The graves, Blainey. I realize now the graves are the key. They did not dig them to bury Norseman and his men. The holes were already there when the Green Coats arrived. The Wakinyan dug them so they could hide and then lunge upon the Green Coats from within their midst. It explains everything. By the time Norseman and the others opened fire, it was too late.”

Beep, beep, beep…

“Then…”

“They’re ahead of us as well as behind. Planted somewhere, camouflaged, waiting in the very spot they know we will make our stand.”

McCracken’s eyes darted back and forth from the range finder to Wareagle. “But they knew Norseman was trailing them. We’re a different story.”

“The night has betrayed us. They must have circled back. Or…”

“Four hundred yards, Indian. Or what?”

“They knew about our presence from the start.”

“And left Norseman’s weapons out in the open?”

“Giving us what we wanted, what we needed to play their game.”

“Three hundred and fifty yards…What now?”

“They timed their move perfectly. All routes north and south are impassable.”

The range finder seemed to be getting louder. “Leaving us with only east and west. Terrific.”

“There is a third option, Blainey.”

“Three hundred yards, Indian.”

“They know even before we do where we will choose to make our stand ahead. Their greatest weapon is this very understanding. It was no different in the hellfire with the Black Hearts. Remember, Blainey?”

McCracken’s mind drifted back and wanted to stay there. “We became the Black Hearts, and that’s how we beat them. That’s how we stayed alive.”

“As we must do again, Blainey.”

Beep, beep, beep…

Chapter 9

The ditches they dug in the ground were just deep enough to conceal them under a layer of dirt and brush. Blaine had switched the range finder off when the blips were less than one hundred yards away. Then Johnny helped him cover himself. How the big Indian could manage the same task all by himself, Blaine would never know. But there was plenty about Johnny he couldn’t fathom and never would.

Blaine silently counted out the steps of their pursuers, trying to anticipate the second those steps would be upon their position. If Wareagle’s ploy didn’t work, death would come with no chance for resistance. But Johnny’s words had their usual ring of confidence. The best strategy makes use of something the enemy uses himself, something so personal that the idea of another using it is inconceivable.

Blaine recognized that the means by which the Wakinyan had dispatched Norseman’s team had changed Johnny’s view of them. Their use of such a brilliant stratagem revealed them to be clever tacticians as well as murderous monsters.

A faint rustling reached Blaine in his self-made crypt. Not a sound so much as a disturbance in the ground he had become a part of. It was no more than the here-and-gone ruffle a small creature would make as it went its way in the underbrush. And yet it belonged to creatures powerful enough to savagely murder seven Green Berets.

He could feel the ground stir directly above him.

One of them’s right above me…

Gone, though, before he could even complete the thought. Somehow that slowed Blaine’s heart. The test had been passed. Johnny’s plan, this part anyway, was going to work.

But a fresh fear washed over him like cold water down the back on a hot summer day. He had made the world of the enemy his own world in Vietnam, in Israel, in a dozen other countries. He had felt his heart lurching for his throat and his guts twisted into bag ties to hold in his breath. The feeling that had just passed over him now was not the black cold he remembered. It was more like a frigid void, a white noise darkening in the night, as if a vacuum were walking above.

Blaine hardened his resolve to keep from trembling. He almost retched, and his sense of time deserted him. With his other senses already stifled, the vise of panic tightened around him.

Fight it, dammit! Fight it!

Forming that resolve coherently was enough to do the job. The shallow breathing he allowed himself steadied. Blaine flexed his fingers to regain physical control.

Then a hand drove down into his hollow. McCracken kicked for freedom as it pushed for his face.

Blaine recognized the hand as Johnny’s just in time to still himself.

“We must move quickly, Blainey. They will be back before long.” Wareagle helped McCracken to his feet and watched him stretch the life back into his limbs. Then Blaine leaned back over and retrieved the range finder from his hollow.

Beep, beep, beep…

“Moving away from us, Indian.”

“Not for long.”

The red blips continued to move farther from the center of the grid.

“So, what now?”

“We use more of their medicine against them. We set a trap, Blainey. With us as bait.”

“Because Ben Norseman was kind enough to leave us with the snare we needed,” McCracken said as he pulled the fuel air explosive cylinder from his pack.

“The Wakinyan who walked upon our graves will meet up with the rest soon,” said Wareagle. “When they backtrack our way, our own personal hellfire will greet them.”

“Gonna piss off a lot of conservationists, Indian.”

“The land will understand, Blainey. Something must die if the balance of nature is to be preserved.” Wareagle gazed through the dark jungle in the same direction the range finder was aimed. “They’re coming.”

“Pretty decent breeze. What do you make for direction?”

“At our backs now; blowing west to east.”

“And say two to three minutes for the Wakinyan to cover the five hundred yards the range finder gives us.” He turned the cylinder over to work the timer. “I’ll set the timer for a minute and a half. Catch them dead in the center that way.”

“Not right here, Blainey.”

“Why?”

“The shock wave could still catch us. We’re in a valley right now, but we can make that work for us by climbing out after setting the charge near the rim.”

“I like your thinking, Indian.”

Heading west, they soon reached the point where the valley began to slope upward. Blaine’s eyes darted furiously from the trail to the range finder, which so far had shown nothing.

“Get ready, Blainey.”

McCracken handed the range finder to Johnny and pulled the explosive cylinder from his pack. It was heavier than it looked, and he lowered it to the ground to set the timing and release mechanism. The whole process was incredibly simple.

“Just tell me when.”

The sweep of the range finder’s arrow found a small splotch coming in from the east and the wind that blew toward it.

“Now, Blainey.”

McCracken had already set the timer on the 1:30 mark. He flipped a switch; a small light next to it glowed dull dusty red.

“Let’s move, Indian!”

They sped up the slope and out of the valley, never looking back. McCracken’s eyes darted constantly to his watch. Wareagle counted the seconds in his mind. At a minute twenty-five, Blaine started to shout a warning that was lost in the blast that followed.

It came like a sonic boom, a hammer blow striking the earth itself. The night was instantly alight with a blinding orange flash that turned white as heat poured from it. A hot gush of air caught Blaine and Johnny from behind and pitched them airborne. Branches, stones, fragments of boulders and trees rained down on them as they instinctively covered their heads. A fire that was too hot to burn very long continued to light up the night. The air crackled and popped. McCracken’s face was singed, and his breath was hot.

“The Wakinyan are burning in hell, Indian,” he said finally.

“Only if hell will have them, Blainey.”

They moved over tough terrain, up a steep grade. The flames died before long, but a whitish glow continued to emanate from the area of the blast. A huge, gaping scar would be left in the body of the jungle, but its soul was unmarred. Johnny assured Blaine of this.

The two men walked until the terrain became too treacherous and they were forced to stop until the next morning. Though both were exhausted, they maintained alternate watches all night. Neither wanted to admit their fear that the Wakinyan might have survived the massive blast, but they felt it nonetheless, and Blaine spent his watch with his eye on the range finder.

The arrow swept monotonously and found nothing.

At dawn they started out for where they had left Luis and their boat. It was a two-hour journey, much of it downhill. The last stretch was accompanied by the quiet sounds of the trunk river, which had delivered them to the jungle in the first place. At last Wareagle led the way down the first path that looked familiar. It was all McCracken could do to restrain himself from bursting out of the jungle in glee. Everything considered, it wouldn’t bother him terribly if he never saw the Amazon Basin again.

Up ahead, Wareagle had stopped on the trunk river’s bank, shoulders stiffening in familiar fashion.

“Son of a bitch,” Blaine muttered when his eyes followed Johnny’s toward the water.

The boat was missing. Luis was gone.

“Looks like I didn’t give the bastard enough whiskey.”

“No, Blainey,” said Wareagle.

And that was when McCracken realized Johnny was looking upward to the right, toward a shape swaying in the breeze. Luis, more accurately what remained of him, had been hung from a tree branch twenty feet off the ground. His eyes bulged, and his tongue protruded grotesquely. Hanging had not been the worst that had happened to him.

His hands and feet had been sliced off. The blood that had dropped from the stumps had pooled in the brush and leaves, scarlet red against dark green.

Blaine and Johnny barely had time to glance at each other before the pair of Blackhawk helicopters swooped down over the river and hovered with machine guns clearly leveled at them.

“Raise your hands in the air and hold your positions!” a voice blared over a loudspeaker. “Repeat: Raise your hands in the air and stay where you are!”

McCracken found himself doing just as he was told, though his gaze was fixed on the course of the empty river. The descending Blackhawk pushed its stiff back wind into him, and he closed his eyes against the sudden onslaught of debris. He couldn’t see anything now, but there was nothing to see. Their boat was long gone by now, and the blackest part of this heart of darkness was surely on board.