The Omicron Legion

Chapter 30

Even though the bunker’s conference hall was huge, those seated at the table felt cramped and uneasy. Only the shape seated in the shadows at the front of the room remained immobile as always, apparently unfazed by the exchange of words that had been going on for some minutes now.

“I’m telling you, it’s out of control!”

The voice of Virginia Maxwell, droning into the hall through an unseen speaker from Gap headquarters in Newport News, had a desperate ring to it.

“Nothing is ever out of control.” These words emerged from the shape at the front of the room.

“This is an exception, and I am not the one to blame for it,” the head of the Gap said. “I did not lose McCracken in Brazil.”

“But you were the one who insisted we involve him in the first place.”

“I had nothing to do with the series of failures that followed. Using him for our own best interests was the best track to take. If everything had gone as planned, he would have eliminated the six killers and led us to Takahashi himself.”

“But it didn’t go as planned, did it?” said Pierce. “Your Mr. McCracken — and the people working with him — ended up dangerously close to the truth, and now all of them have vanished.”

“I’m doing my best to correct that,” Virginia Maxwell said.

“How?”

“McCracken, Belamo, and the Indian have been red-flagged, marked for immediate execution. Shoot on sight, is the old terminology. Every intelligence agency in the book has gotten the word.”

“Your voice is not exactly brimming with confidence, Miss Maxwell.”

“I’ve done what I can.”

“But it isn’t enough, is it?” Pierce challenged her. “McCracken’s been red-flagged before and all it did was make him madder, more determined. I don’t like having him as an enemy.”

“That’s why I came to you with the problem.”

“You came to us because you are no longer capable of handling it!”

“What is it that you want?” the darkened shape asked from the front of the hall.

“He’s going to come after me,” droned the voice of Virginia Maxwell. “I want to let him.”

“Fine with me,” muttered Pierce.

“To set a trap,” the head of the Gap continued.

“Have you come for our blessing?” This question came from the shape.

“No. For your help.”

“You have the resources of an entire organization, an entire intelligence community, behind you.”

“They’re no match for McCracken. I want to draw him out, but once he surfaces I’ve got to be sure he can be taken.”

“Yet by your own admission…” The shape broke off his own words. “Yes, I see what you’re getting at.”

“They alone can stop McCracken and his Indian friend.”

Pierce got to his feet. “They? Are you suggesting we use the disciples against a pair of men!”

“The security of this operation may well depend on it,” Virginia Maxwell insisted.

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Think of the risk involved if we do this!”

“Think of the risk involved if we don’t.”

Pierce’s eyes fell proudly on the huge wall map dotted with red lights to denote the targeted nuclear power plants. “Our operation is less than two days from activation.”

“There may not be an operation if McCracken remains at large. I submit to you, gentlemen, that he disappeared in Brazil because Takahashi reached him before we could. That means he knows everything — and knowledge in the hands of a man like this is the most dangerous weapon of all. Don’t you see? If he met with Takahashi, he has the list! He knows our names, our identities, all of us. Even if our operation is successful, he will hunt us down.”

“He could not know the location of these bunkers,” the shape told her.

“He’ll find them. He’ll find us. It’s what he does. We’d be playing right into his hands.”

“You sound very certain of all this, Miss Maxwell.”

A sigh preceded Virginia Maxwell’s next words. “I’ve been in the intelligence game for over two decades now. The operatives I haven’t worked with I’ve read about, and McCracken stands apart from all of them. He’s not the best in any single facet of the game, but he’s the best by a long shot when you consider all of them together. Goddammit, he killed a disciple. He killed someone we made to be unkillable.”

“You’re sure he’ll go after you and not one of the others on the list?” asked the shape.

“Absolutely.”

“Why?”

“Because he knows I’m still available, and he’s already familiar with the logistics involved.”

“That being the case,” said Pierce, “it’s conceivable even the disciples won’t be able to help you.”

“Just give them to me and let me worry about the rest.”

“We’d be risking the entire operation if we did.”

“You’d be risking it even more if McCracken is left at large.”

The shadow projected behind the shape showed the semblance of a nod. “I want to hear your plan first, Miss Maxwell. If I approve of it, we’ll do as you say.”

The car was an ancient Yellow Cab pockmarked with rust. “Ain’t much, but she runs,” said Sal Belamo, slamming the driver’s door with a creak.

“Always nice to travel in style.”

“Good to see you, too, McCracken,” Belamo said, and scooted around to open the door for Patty. “Scuse my manners, but being red-flagged tends to stress me out. You ask me, I’d be better off taking up boxing again and hoping Carlos Monzon comes outta retirement to finish the job.”

After leaving Takahashi, Patty and Blaine had left Japan on a commercial airliner. No way, McCracken figured, could every flight coming into the country be watched. As a further precaution, on the chance the enemy knew of their brief stay in Japan, they changed planes at Heathrow and boarded a flight bound for Chicago. The last leg was a nonstop to Boston’s Logan Airport, where Sal Belamo was waiting. With the hours lost to plane changes and time zones, they arrived late in the morning on Thursday, forty-eight hours before the disciples would begin their deadly work.

“You get ahold of Johnny?” Blaine asked Sal.

“We’re on our way to pick him up now, boss. Things ain’t been great for him, either. Had a bad experience in Philadelphia, where one of the six killers got himself dead in a bad way.”

“Aren’t many good ones.”

“Even fewer worse than this. Somebody twisted his head like a bottle cap. Johnny said it was one of those Thunder whatevers.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Then check this out. Four of the other killers are toast, too, and the last one is probably floating in some river. That surprise ya?”

“Not in the least.”

Sal honked the horn in frustration. “When you plan on telling me what the fuck went down in Jap land?”

“After we pick up Johnny.”

Wareagle met them in a rest area just north of Boston, as planned. As soon as he got into the back of the cab, Blaine could feel something wasn’t right. He couldn’t explain exactly what; the big Indian simply felt, well, different. In all the years they had known each other, Johnny had been unflappably measured, existing on a keel so even it was maddening. But today an uneasy edge hung about him, something sharp and new.

“Hey,” Sal Belamo broke in as their stares held, “you ask me, this tub doesn’t make for our best route of travel south. Not exactly inconspicuous, if you get my drift.”

“We’ll find the nearest shopping center and make a change.”

“Big Lincoln if I can spot one?”

“Sounds good,” Blaine replied. “Give me a chance to tell you boys about our unscheduled trip to the Orient….”

“You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me,” Sal Belamo muttered after Blaine had finished detailing the incredible story of the Children of the Black Rain. “This goddamn albino hires six icemen to whack a bunch of people the Japs planted as babies?”

“All grown up now and holding the fate of this country in the balance.”

“Not them alone, though, is it? Shit, that we could handle. They got your Omicron legion in their corner, and that changes the odds.”

“In our favor, maybe.”

“You got an idea, chief?”

“The makings of one, anyway.”

“What comes next?”

“We ride south.”

“Washington?”

“Not quite.”

“I’m not afraid of you. I want you to know that.” Abraham looked up from the fire he was kneeling in front of in Virginia Maxwell’s study that night. The flames lent their color to his straw-colored hair and glistened off his ice-blue eyes.

“Nice of you to say so,” he replied.

“The others will be arriving at the rendezvous point shortly. You, of course, will be there. I leave it to you to brief them on what they will be facing tomorrow.”

“You’re that sure you can predict McCracken’s actions?”

“He has no choice,” Virginia Maxwell insisted. “This is the only course of action available to him, under the circumstances.”

“Yes,” Abraham said, with a smile Maxwell did not understand. He rose and stood there in front of the fireplace. “Is this the way you treat all your people?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You haven’t come within eight feet of me since I arrived, Ms. Maxwell. I had hoped our first meeting would have been more pleasant.”

“This is business.”

“Everything is business to me.” He shook his head as if disappointed. “I can understand it coming from the others, but I expected more from you.”

“We have a task before us and nothing more.”

“No, Ms. Maxwell. You are scared of me, because you don’t understand me. And what you don’t understand, you can’t control. Would you like me to tell you about myself? Would you like to hear about the feeling that rushes through me when I kill? I live for those opportunities, Ms. Maxwell, and when they are not provided, I create them. This bother you?”

“Er…no.”

“The Indian understood me. I saw it in his eyes. He understood me because we’re the same. It’s the same with McCracken. I can feel it. That is not good.”

“They’ll be there together.”

“I know.”

“You’ll have your chance.”

Abraham glided close enough to Virginia Maxwell for her to see his lean face clearly for the first time. “And perhaps then you’ll understand me and the others. Without McCracken and the Indian, we’ll be all that is left.”

They checked into the Days Inn-Oyster Point in the center of Newport News; they would be using it as a base. Patty Hunsecker retired to her room for a bath, and Sal Belamo went out for supplies, leaving Blaine and Johnny alone.

“What gives, Indian?” Blaine asked Wareagle, who was staring into the mirror suspended over the room’s dresser. It was too small, of course, to accommodate him, and he had to bend slightly at the knees to look into his own eyes.

Wareagle said nothing.

McCracken spoke again. “When you got into the car, you felt different, Indian, like I never felt you before.”

Wareagle turned his gaze toward McCracken. “Look in the mirror, Blainey, and tell me what you see.”

“Let me open the blinds and turn the lights on first.”

“Without the light.”

“A pair of outlines without much detail, Indian. Yours is bigger than mine.”

“Before facing his Hanbelachia, such is the true warrior. A figure from a child’s coloring book before any shades have been added between the lines.” Wareagle turned slowly from the mirror and looked at Blaine. “Facing Abraham across the sky in Philadelphia should have faced me with the Hanbelachia that is my fate, but instead it faced me with something else.” Johnny turned back to the mirror. “I looked into his eyes and I saw a looking glass, I saw myself. I realized that my shape had been filled in by the will of others.” Wareagle turned his gaze hard into McCracken’s “The Wakinyan are what the country made us into first.”

“Or tried to.”

“No, Blainey, succeeded. We were trained and tempered, and then the hellfire forged our souls in an image that has held us hostage ever since. We hide behind the illusion we are doing right, but that is only from the perspective they gave us.”

“What about justification?”

“Each act finds its own. The doing provides the context, but in the end the act is the same.”

“You’re saying we’re no better than the disciples are?”

“I’m saying we’re no different.”

Blaine came a little closer; his reflection sharpened next to Wareagle’s in the mirror. “No, Indian, you’ve got it wrong this time, and you said how yourself. Nam — the hellfire — forged our souls because we had souls to forge. The disciples had their souls stripped away. That’s what made them. That’s what makes them.”

A slight smile from Johnny flickered in the mirror. “It seems, Blainey, that you have forgotten the first lesson we learned in the hellfire: Never judge the enemy by your own values. The Black Hearts did not consider themselves soulless, and in another way neither do the Wakinyan.”

“This is more than just us against them.”

Wareagle’s bear claw of a right hand flattened out against the mirror and seemed ready to tear through the glass. “It is our vision quest to face them. Passing the rites successfully means smashing the mirror. We trap their reflections inside, at the same time we free our own from what others have made us.”

“Eleven of them left. Plus Abraham.”

“Yes, Blainey.”

“We can do it, Indian, but only if we meet them on our terms.”

“Not an easy task.”

“But you said it yourself, Johnny: I know how they think, and I know how the Children of the Black Rain think, too.”

“Your plan is to outguess them, Blainey?”

“My plan is to do exactly what they expect me to do, and take it from there.”

Wareagle’s head tilted slightly. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”

“I never said we could reasonably expect to be able to handle the Wakinyan alone.”

“It appears we have no choice.”

“Appearances, Indian, can be deceiving.”

Chapter 31

Virginia Maxwell’s limousine rolled into the underground garage constructed beneath the Oyster Point office building housing the Gap at 9:00 Friday morning. Access to the organization’s floors could be gained only through a single entrance at the garage level. The entrance had a single door that looked utterly innocuous except for the small electronic slot that accepted identification cards to permit access. The doorknob was just for show. It opened and closed mechanically and was formed of eight-inch plate steel.

Maxwell’s limousine slid through the serpentine garage structure and parked in its accustomed spot. Seconds later, surrounded by four guards, the head of Gap was ushered to the door and led through it. Two more armed guards were waiting in the claustrophobic entry, one already pushing the button that opened the elevator doors. Seconds later, the compartment was whizzing straight to the eighteenth floor, where Virginia Maxwell’s office was located.

The guards were still enclosing her when the compartment doors slid open on Maxwell’s floor.

McCracken and Wareagle had watched the limousine arrive through binoculars from the top floor of one of the soon-to-be completed buildings adjacent to the one housing the Gap. It had taken all of the previous afternoon and evening to get the logistics of the operation in place and, even now, too much remained unsure.

“How many, Indian?” Blaine asked Johnny, who still had not taken the binoculars from his eyes.

“Four men with her in the backseat, Blainey.”

“Can you make any outside the building or on the roof?”

“Two shooters on the roof. Five scattered about the garage entrance in various guises.”

“Makes eleven in all.”

“None of them Wakinyan, Blainey.”

“What else is bothering you, Indian?”

“She knew we’d see all her guards.”

“Of course.”

“And she knew we’d be able to get by them.”

“Equally true, Johnny.”

“Too much show, Blainey. She is making this too easy.”

“Then what do you say we take her up on her invitation?”

At ten-thirty, with the building residents settled in for the morning, Patty Hunsecker

drove the van up to the main entrance of the underground parking garage.

“Go right on through,” the guard told her, and just like that she was in.

The van belonged to the Virginia Air Filtration and Conditioning Company and had been appropriated by Sal Belamo the previous night. The building containing the Gap had permanently closed windows, relying totally on its internal system for proper air flow. Accordingly, the Virginia Company’s vans were common enough sights on the premises and, of course, anyone wearing the proper overalls would have easy access to just what Blaine needed.

Sal had obtained the overalls, too, although Johnny’s fit only as well as could be expected.

Blaine and Johnny leaped out of the back of the van as soon as Patty had put her foot on the brake.

“Wait five minutes and then drive the hell out of here,” he said when he had come around to the driver’s side window. Wareagle unloaded a pair of tanks from the van as Blaine gave Patty her instructions.

“Explaining to the guard—”

“That you left a tank back at your base. Just like we went over.”

“I’d rather wait for you.”

McCracken shook his head. “You know where you’ve got to be.”

“You sure you’ve got all this figured that perfectly, McCracken?”

“Close enough. Wish us luck.”

Before she could, Blaine and Johnny moved off, a walkie-talkie up against Blaine’s lips.

“Yo, Sal.”

“Got ya, McCrackenballs.”

“We’re in.”

“Okay, my watch is on. Eight minutes and counting, boss.”

“You’ll have my signal in three.”

“Ain’t we punctual.”

“Comes with the territory.”

Blaine accepted the tanks from Wareagle and stowed one under each armpit. They were about half the size and weight of a full scuba tank. He made his way to a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, which was ten yards to the right, while Johnny moved to the door beyond which lay the Gap’s private entrance. McCracken picked the lock in twenty seconds, then stepped into a brightly lit, tiled corridor that wound its way to the air systems control bay that linked up with the central core.

“Who the fuck are you?” A thick voice assailed his ears when he was halfway there.

“Who does it look like?” Blaine shot back. The voice’s owner was a beefy man with olive skin who was chomping on a cigar.

“Some asshole in coveralls with a pair of tanks that don’t belong here.”

“Says who?”

“Building plant manager.”

“Oh.”

McCracken let the tanks drop. The resulting clamor took the building plant manager by surprise, and Blaine lunged at him. His first blow caught the man in the solar plexus and doubled him over. Blaine’s second cracked into the rear of his skull and the cigar went flying. The man crumpled, and McCracken caught him before he hit the ground. He dragged the unconscious form to the entrance of the air systems control room. He was returning to retrieve the tanks when he ran into Johnny Wareagle.

“That was fast, Indian.”

“Simple work, Blainey. The Gap entrance is sealed — the elevator leading to it rendered inoperative.”

“I ran into some complications.”

“No plan can account for everything, even when drawn by the spirits.”

“Well, this might turn out to be a blessing….”

Sure enough, Blaine found a set of keys in the manager’s pocket, which saved him the trouble of picking the lock to the much more secure door of the air systems room. He brought the tanks in with him while Johnny dragged the manager into the room.

McCracken had done plenty of work for the Gap over the years, but he’d never once been in this room. Somehow he was expecting it to be like the boiler room of an elementary school, yet he found himself looking at something that looked like it had come off of the starship Enterprise. Shiny silver and plain plastic tubing ran in neat rows from the walls and ceiling, linking up with a series of boxlike chrome devices that looked like home heating units.

“The main exchangers and pumps are built into the ground beneath us,” he said, remembering Sal’s words and starting to move toward one of those Belamo had indicated. “These are the filters that recirculate the building’s air. Highly efficient. Totally new air every thirty-seven minutes. Particles going out now will reach the whole building in two and a half.”

“We have under six left.”

McCracken found the first of the two filters and squeezed the walkie-talkie between his shoulder and ear while he went to work with his tank. Johnny looked his way to confirm he had found the second filter.

“The Indian and I are hooked in, Sal. Get ready to do your thing.”

“Tell the fuck-wads upstairs pleasant dreams for me.”

Blaine and Johnny turned their valves at the same time; instantly a potent form of knockout gas flew into the air pumps servicing floors ten through twenty. Though the Gap occupied only five floors within those ten, it was impossible to isolate them, so some innocent people had to be knocked out as well. McCracken checked his watch.

“Let’s go!”

They bolted from the room and rushed to the service elevator. The Gap could not be reached through any of the regular building elevators, but the single service elevator provided access to the fourteenth and lowest floor. Blaine and Johnny had already donned their gas masks by the time the elevator doors had slid closed again. Even though the effects of the gas were instantaneous, it would continue to pump for several minutes. Both masks had communicators built in, tuned to the same channel Sal Belamo was on. The service elevator reached the fourteenth floor, and Johnny squeezed his thumb against the Close Door button.

“We’re in position, Sal,” said McCracken. “Do your thing.”

Blaine knew he needed a final diversion to assure against unwanted entry or discovery of the sleeping workers on ten of the building’s floors. That diversion had been set through the empty building the preceding evening. Sal Belamo’s special smoke bombs would activate the fire alarms and a number of sprinkler systems. The elevators would automatically shut off, forcing the people inside the building to use the stairwells to reach the street. Even more importantly, no one would be permitted to enter.

When the alarms sounded, Johnny pulled his thumb from the button; the compartment doors slid open.

The Gap could have been a law or accounting office by the first look of it. Individual offices lined the corridor they stepped into, many with desks perched before them personed by now-sleeping secretaries. The five floors containing the Gap were entirely self-contained, linked together by open staircases joining one level to the next.

“Conference room’s three floors up,” Blaine announced as he started up the first staircase. “Maxie will be at the morning briefing.”

He and Johnny had to hurdle bodies several times during their rush upward. The Gap seemed to have simply frozen in place. Blaine saw spilled coffee in several places, imagined he could smell it in spite of his gas mask. The sound of his hard breathing echoed through his eardrums and added to the chaos generated by the constant wail of the activated fire alarm.

“In here,” Blaine said to Johnny finally, and they stepped into the conference room where the morning briefing would have been proceeding had its members not been gassed to sleep.

All the heads slumped over the table belonged to men.

“I don’t like this, Indian. She should have been here.”

“Late, perhaps.”

“Maxie’s never late. Let’s check her office. Next floor up.”

“I do not feel the Wakinyan, Blainey,” Johnny said on the way there.

“Good sign maybe.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Yo, boss,” Belamo called, and his voice reverberated through Blaine’s mask. “Fire trucks coming fast, lots of ’em. Time’s a-wasting.”

“We’ll pick up Maxie and follow the plan.”

The fifth floor up belonged entirely to her and the Gap’s senior staff. It was more isolated than any of the other floors to start with — and even more so now since several of its occupants were asleep in the conference room Blaine and Johnny had just left. McCracken stopped briefly at the door to Virginia Maxwell’s office.

“Morning, Maxie,” Blaine said to her shape, which was slumped over the big desk asleep. “Aren’t we looking chipper this morning!”

McCracken moved behind the desk and eased her head back. “We’ve got problems, Sal,” he reported over the walkie-talkie.

The woman behind the desk wasn’t Virginia Maxwell.

“We’ve been duped!”

“Come again, boss,” Belamo said.

“The real Maxie didn’t make it in this morning. What we got ourselves is a double.”

“A fucking trap!” Sal squawked into the walkie-talkie.

“Could be.”

“But nobody went inside after you, I tell ya! None of them went inside!”

“They might have been in already.”

“Jesus Christ, boss! Jesus Christ! You ask me, you boys better make time gettin’ out.”

“Plan B, Sal.”

“I read ya, boss.”

A sound reached McCracken and Wareagle at the same time, barely rising above the continuous screech of the fire alarm. Little more than a door opening, perhaps some furniture being disturbed as someone approached from the floors below. They looked at each other.

“We got company, Sal,” Blaine said hurriedly into the walkie-talkie.

“Oh, fuck.”

“Get away from here!”

“Hey, I’m—”

“I said get the fuck away! Now!” Blaine ordered.

Blaine looked at Johnny, who stood as rigid as a guard dog sniffing an intruder’s scent.

“They’re here, Blainey.”

McCracken drew his pistol an instant ahead of Wareagle. They carried identical 9-mms loaded with Splat exploding bullets. No sense bothering with anything else today. Johnny started for the door.

“No, Indian. I’ve got a better idea,” Blaine said. He looked up and pointed his pistol at the ceiling.

The first Splat he fired shook the entire room and showered him with rubble from what had been the center of the ceiling. The second Splat blew a hole straight through the crawl space containing the wiring and filtration ducts into the floor above.

“Going up, Indian?”

They slid Virginia Maxwell’s desk over so it was directly beneath the hole in the ceiling. Blaine jumped, grabbing hold of some ruined corrugated piping for purchase. Wareagle pushed him the rest of the way into a smoke-filled office on the nineteenth floor, which was directly above the Gap. McCracken was helping Johnny up when gunfire erupted in Virginia Maxwell’s office, just missing the Indian’s legs as Blaine hoisted him the rest of the way up. With Wareagle safe, Blaine dived to a portion of the floor that was still intact and tried to get off a shot through the hole. He caught a glimpse of a large figure garbed in a gas mask almost identical to his own and fired at it as it whirled.

The sons of bitches were ready for us, goddammit!

An explosion followed, but no scream. Blaine rolled again, and now it was Johnny who fired down through the jagged hole in the floor, his target Virginia Maxwell’s desk. The desk ruptured into a thousand pieces, effectively turning it into a massive grenade of wood fragments. McCracken was on his feet by then, and they moved out into the corridor together. McCracken looked in the direction of the elevator bank outside the glass entry doors.

“Switched off, Blainey, because of the fire alarm.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

McCracken led the way through the glass doors and back-pedaled down the short hall as if expecting some of the disciples to charge at them at any second.

“You take the left, I’ll take the right,” he told Johnny.

Wareagle knew instantly what he meant. Not hesitating at all, the two of them pried open the doors to the shut-down elevators. The car on Johnny’s side had stopped eight floors down. The one on Blaine’s was in the lobby or possibly the garage. A straight twenty-story drop.

“Put your gloves on, Indian.”

“Not the shorter drop, Blainey?”

“With another door to pry open once we get down there? Not on your life. This’ll give us the head start we need.”

If Johnny had any doubts as to the necessity of that strategy, they vanished when a pair of dark, gas-masked figures — with machine guns firing — came at them from the direction of the glass doors. Blaine and Wareagle fired a pair of Splats each; the result was a chaotic symphony of exploding glass as the entrance blew inward. Flames blew back toward the retreating figures, then quickly gave way to black smoke. McCracken reached across the threshold of the elevator shaft and grabbed hold of the cable.

“Ready or not,” he said to the void beneath him, “here I come!”

The instant he dropped downward, Johnny leaped over the threshold after him, thick gloves digging hard against the cable as his slide began. The cable was well greased, which added to the blinding pace of their descent. To keep reasonably under control, Blaine found himself turning around the cable as he moved. He grew dizzy, and the shaft spun about him crazily. He closed his eyes, but the fear of dropping blind gripped him tighter than the dizziness, so he opened them again.

It couldn’t have been more than four seconds in all before the stalled elevator compartment itself drew dangerously close. Instinctively he wrapped his feet around the cable and twisted it tight between his calves and ankles. The impetus stopped his spin and drove him into a straight downward slide, the greased cable flying through his hands. He fought to slow himself at the end, but still hit the roof of the elevator with a thud. He went down hard, watching Wareagle land a foot from him with a mere flex of his knees. In unison they stripped off their gas masks.

“Uh-oh,” McCracken muttered as he came to grips with his one miscalculation.

The compartment doors would still be centered directly before the garage level. And they couldn’t simply drop into the elevator through its roof and open those doors to safety, because Johnny had sealed them minutes before. The only option left was the lobby-level floor just beyond their reach.

Blaine was about to relay his conclusions to Johnny when the gunfire erupted from above. It slammed off the shaft walls, ricocheting madly, and Blaine had to cover his ears.

“We’ve got to stop them, Indian!” McCracken shouted as he hugged the wall for cover.

Wareagle was directly across from him. “Your gun, Blainey!”

“Splats aren’t much good at this range!”

“No, shoot at the—”

The rest of Johnny’s words were drowned out by a fresh barrage of bullets, but McCracken had already realized the intent of his words. He aimed his pistol directly in front of him, at the elevator cable attached to the car they were standing on. The Splat thumped out and shredded it with a burst that took out a portion of the wall across the shaft. Instantly the counterweight fell and the cable shot up the shaft in a steel-weighted blur that would sever any flesh it came into contact with.

“Give me a boost, Indian,” McCracken asked Johnny, listening for a scream to pour down the shaft from the nineteenth floor. Even though none came, at least the disciples had been prevented from following the same route down.

He was on Wareagle’s shoulders a blink later, working the doors with all his strength. He ended up splitting them six inches apart, which was enough to force his shoulders through, and leveraged them the rest of the way. He pushed himself out of the shaft and onto the lobby floor, then grabbed hold of Johnny’s arms to hoist him up. It took all his strength, but he managed it just ahead of another battery of automatic fire aimed down the shaft from the nineteenth floor.

Together they moved out of the alcove housing the elevator bank and eased in among the crowds still pouring out through the lobby from the building’s highest floors. They used the hubbub to change their clips of exploding bullets for normal ones. If the disciples confronted them down here, the Splats would unquestionably kill innocent people. The bullets chambered now were Glazer safety slugs, composed of dozens of small pellets suspended in liquid Teflon and finished in a blue tip. Guaranteed one-shot stop for a normal man. With the disciples, who could tell?

Johnny and Blaine continued through the lobby. They made no effort to disguise themselves, staying wary as they moved.

“You think we finished any upstairs, Indian?”

“Doubtful, Blainey — and several would have started down the stairs as soon as our plunge down the elevator shaft became known.”

On the street fronting the building’s entrance in Oyster Park, police and fire and rescue officials continued to arrive in droves. The first team was already moving through the lobby en route to the floors that had set off the alarm. They moved quickly, but were not panicked. The safety of the building did not seem at stake, plus the sensor board was still reading problems only in those select areas.

“The Wakinyan will fire indiscriminately into the crowd once they have spotted us,” Johnny said when they stepped outside. “Innocent lives mean nothing to them.” Just then McCracken spotted two ladder and engine trucks that had pulled into a fire lane directly against the curb. “And since we have to make sure they see us…You’ll know the disciples when you see them, right, Indian?”

“I’ll know them when I feel them, Blainey.”

“Once they reach the lobby, I mean.”

Wareagle nodded.

Blaine gestured toward the nearer of the two trucks. “I assume you can drive one of those things?…”

Johnny smiled.

“They’ve reached the lobby, Blainey,” Wareagle told him less than thirty seconds later as they lingered on the other side of the nearer truck.

“Then we’d better let them know we’re here.”

The truck’s powerful engine was humming. Only a few of the arriving firemen were anywhere near it. One was sitting behind the wheel, but before he knew what was happening, Johnny had tossed him out. McCracken started to work the control panel on the near side. He pulled a pair of levers labeled DECK GUN and TANK TO PUMP and then located the red throttle control and drew it out as well. At the same time, Johnny, who was now in the cab, switched the truck’s engine to power the five-hundred-gallon main pump.

“Ready, Indian?” Blaine asked as he climbed on the truck.

Wareagle flashed him the thumbs-up sign, and McCracken positioned himself behind the deck gun. He adjusted the nozzle for a narrow stream, then rotated the control wheel for the angle he wanted. At first McCracken couldn’t distinguish the disciples moving among the crowd; then he noticed a number of figures that seemed to cause the throng to buckle as they surged forward. Blaine spun one last knob, and the water exploded from the deck gun in a narrow stream that was directed toward the crowd. The people who were trying to leave the building from the lobby entrance were shoved harshly backward. Those already outside were blistered by the powerful jets and thrust in all directions.

McCracken first made sure the deck gun was aimed straight for the main entrance, then he retraced his steps from it to the control panel. “Get ready, Indian!” he shouted into the cab on his way.

At the panel, he shoved the throttle inward. Instantly the deck gun’s flow slowed to a trickle and then stopped altogether.

“Go!” Blaine screamed, and Johnny shoved the engine into drive without disengaging the power takeoff. The gears screeched in protest, but the truck lurched away from the curb.

McCracken was working his way through the cab’s rear window; over the jump seat, when the truck bashed into a pair of police cars that had been parked in their path. Several police officers had their guns out, but none fired, frozen in what must have been a moment of total confusion.

Wareagle crashed through three more parked squad cars and a rescue wagon as he picked up speed down the street, where a path was clearing for him right down the middle. Wareagle kept the ear-wrenching siren going and used the loud horn regularly to continue clearing the street ahead. The top speed of the fire truck wasn’t much over fifty, which meant they’d have to rely almost purely on the head start for escape.

“The police, Blainey,” Johnny said, looking in the rearview mirror as they continued down Thimble Shoals.

“Yeah,” McCracken said, starting to ease himself back over the jump seat.

He gazed over the truck bed in search of a plan, then one made itself available in the form of a hose — over a thousand feet long — that was twisted into neat layers before him. He crawled over it to the back of the truck, grabbed its end, which featured a heavily weighted coupling made to be fitted into fire hydrants, and dropped it out of the truck. The hose began to unravel instantly, flying from the truck bed like spilled milk. It hit the street wildly, an uncoiling snake snapping for a victim. Cars swerved to avoid the hose, or lost control when they climbed over it, catching the pursuing police cars in the snarl.

Once again McCracken joined Wareagle in the cab, almost banging his head on the air tank bolted to the seat between them.

“A brief stretch on Route 17, then we pick up 64, Indian. Straight ride from there.” Johnny checked the large sideview mirror. “Nothing, Blainey.”

“They’ll be coming, Indian. They’ll be coming.”

“Where are the vans?” Abraham had screamed as soon as he and the others were at last able to make their way through the lobby — just in time to see the fire engine screech away.

He had joined the other disciples, some of them drenched far more than he, on the curb, where they were all gathering now. Everything was so chaotic no one noticed them or, a few minutes later, the dark vans that screeched around the corner and pulled into the spot vacated by McCracken’s stolen truck several minutes before. Abraham and the eleven other disciples piled into the vans, taking off in the same direction as McCracken and the Indian.

The men the disciples had been before Omicron would have felt at least some apprehension over the sudden turn of events in the building. But the members of the legion felt something akin to excitement. There seemed little doubt that McCracken and the Indian could match their skills and abilities. Everything else up until now had been too easy. McCracken and the Indian made for a challenge. They looked forward to the final confrontation that was now coming, their only fear being that their foes would escape before it could happen.

Then, as the vans weaved through the clutter of cars bottle-necked by the freed water hose, which was now being cleared from the street, Abraham gazed up and saw signs for Route 17 and Route 64 dead ahead. “That’s the way they went,” he said, and the two vans headed that way.

“I’ve got them, Blainey,” Wareagle reported, spotting them in the sideview mirror.

They had been traveling on Route 64 West for eight minutes now.

McCracken leaned his head out the window to see for himself. “How fast are we going?”

“Fifty.”

“Not fast enough.”

Johnny kept the siren going and leaned on the horn to clear a path for them down the freeway, but the vans were simply able to go faster than the fire engine.

“Guess we’d better slow them up a little, Indian,” Blaine said, and once again he was slithering his way through the cab window.

The truck bed was almost empty now, the water hose having taken up an enormous amount of room, and Blaine’s eyes almost immediately locked on a half-dozen white plastic drums.

“Foam,” he said to himself, with a smile.

Well, not foam so much as a heavy, thick white ooze used in fighting oil and gas fires. Very, very slippery. In other words, perfect…

McCracken had to lean clear across the bed to reach the drums, and the Wakinyan chose that moment to open fire from their vans, now closing in from a hundred and fifty yards back at most. He ducked lower and grasped the first of the heavy drums as bullets bounced off steel, ricocheting around him. He sent the drum rolling down the vacant truck bed and heard a splat! as it shattered on impact with the road. The second was already in motion, with the third and fourth fast behind. By then he could see the foam spreading in wide splotchy waves across the highway, the first van’s tires just reaching it.

From there Blaine could barely believe his eyes. As he slid the final two drums off to further widen the pool, the lead van spun wildly out of control. It was slammed into by a tractor trailer whose driver had made the unfortunate mistake of applying his brakes, sending his vehicle jackknifing across the road. The lead van bounced off the truck and careened from left to right, narrowly missing the trailing one, which had ended up doing a full-circle turn to avoid it.

Behind the vans, a massive pileup resulted as dozens and dozens of cars crashed into one another as soon as their tires met the white ooze covering the highway like a blanket now. By the time Blaine had rejoined Johnny in the cab once again, the Wakinyan were gone from sight in the chaos taking place behind the engine truck. They would regroup, yes, but not before McCracken and Wareagle took full advantage of the final cushion.

“Here we are, Indian,” McCracken said ten minutes later.

Wareagle’s eyes were on the mirror. “I can see them behind us, Blainey. A half mile back, but coming.”

“Right on schedule,” Blaine said as the road sign he had been waiting for appeared on the right of route 64:

Chapter 32

“Everything’s set,” Sal Belamo reported as Wareagle and then McCracken jumped down from the fire engine. They had stopped at the intersection of Jamestown and Richmond roads. Even at the edge of the expertly reconstructed eighteenth-century town, their truck seemed utterly out of place.

“Bout time you get some historical culture, Sal,” Blaine commented, gazing down Williamsburg’s main artery, Duke of Gloucester Street.

“Guess we didn’t need Maxie to draw your Frankensteins here, and ain’t they in for a surprise now.” Belamo gazed around him. “You know, I kinda miss the people in their outfits.”

“I’m sure they don’t mind getting the day off.”

“Yeah, well, the evac order didn’t give them much choice. It looked so real, I almost believed the story myself.”

Johnny Wareagle’s shoulders tensed. “They’re coming, Blainey.”

“Then I guess we’d better get ready.”

The single van squeezed to a halt next to the fire engine. The disciples of the Omicron legion showed no expression whatsoever as they emerged. They had packed into this van following the loss of the second one back on Route 64. Their number was complete, but several were injured. Of the injuries, a pair of separated shoulders appeared the worst, along with one disciple’s limp, and several nasty lacerations. They were not immune to pain, but they were quite adept at controlling it, and even making it work for them. They definitely wanted to do that now.

The disciples stopped to check the weapons they had brought with them from the van. There were mostly machine guns, high caliber and otherwise. Three of these were M203s, M16s with grenade launchers attached to their undersides. There were two shotguns, as well, and grenades were affixed to the belts of three of the legion. Three more carried pistols and if everything fell short, they would use their hands.

Abraham hefted one of the M203s and advanced ahead of the others.

“It’s a trap,” he said, as much to himself as the others.

“What is this place?” one of them asked.

“Reproduction of a colonial town,” Abraham answered. “Complete with authentic props and workmen.”

“There’s no one here,” another member of the legion said.

“Because that’s the way McCracken wanted it. He drew us here. It was his plan all along.”

“Do we go in?” a third asked matter-of-factly.

Abraham flipped off his weapon’s safety and nodded.

There were twelve of them in all; they split into three pairs and two groups of three. They fanned out toward grids of Williamsburg assigned by Abraham. Their mission was search and destroy. If McCracken wanted to make his stand in a confined environment with plenty of areas for concealment and cover, then so be it. It was not their turf yet, but it would be soon.

The scene seemed placid, even to them. Late fall was in the air; the trees lining the Williamsburg streets shifted in their near nakedness, the remaining leaves brown and dry. The main streets were formed of hard-packed gravel. The unpaved walkways lined the streets in landscaped symmetry in front of the rows of colonial buildings. The numerous benches were unsat on. A few horseless carriages stood abandoned down Duke of Gloucester Street. The brick and brown wood of the buildings drank in the sun and gave some of it back. The air smelled of chestnuts and crackling leaves.

Abraham started warily down Duke of Gloucester Street, flanked by John and the wounded Judas. He felt certain McCracken had made a strategic error in choosing this site to make his final stand. No matter how large it was, Williamsburg was still contained. Sooner or later, this would allow the disciples to flush McCracken and the Indian out. It was only a matter of time.

As he came up even with the red brick courthouse on the left-hand side of the street, Abraham reached into his pocket and came out with a motion detector that was a smaller version of the one the Green Berets had brought with them to the jungle. He switched it on and watched the sweep the arrow made through a grid directly before him. He could approximate the positions of the other disciples and thus identify any signals that might come as a result of their motion.

The red line swept the screen, disappeared into the machine’s side, and then swept again.

Abraham knew McCracken’s strategy would be to take them out slowly. It was the best ploy to use and was one he had always excelled in. If he and the Indian were lurking about, preparing their first lunge, the motion detector would betray their strategy and position.

Abraham turned to the right and eyed a section of Williamsburg’s Market Square, which contained a clutter of buildings surrounded by rolling green lawns and well-tended gardens. The motion detector caught a splotch in the lower left of the screen. Abraham quickly superimposed the grid over the area before them and felt his eyes lock on the magazine, an octagonal building used in colonial times to store arms and gunpowder. A high brick wall had been erected around the building to protect the townspeople against a possible explosion. Something was moving inside that wall.

Maybe this is going to be easier than I thought….

“This way,” Abraham said.

The disciples on either side of him, actually, did not need to be told a thing. Perhaps they had seen the indication on the motion detector. Perhaps the slight change in Abraham’s footsteps and the tightening of the rifle in his hands was enough. Either way they had already leveled their weapons when Abraham spoke, and now they cut across the grassy square with him toward the magazine.

The next sweep the arrow made through the grid showed no movement at all in the vicinity. McCracken, or the Indian, was still again, but it was too late. The damage had been done. Abraham was onto him.

Thirty yards from the magazine, he signaled John and Judas to spread out. He figured surprise was on his side, but didn’t want to take any chances. Up ahead, he could see the gate leading through the magazine wall was open. It was not like McCracken or the Indian to commit such an error.

Abraham directed the wounded Judas to move through first from the right flank. John was holding to the left, while Abraham himself was behind a tree, his rifle ready to fire, twenty yards in front of the magazine. Once Judas was through, he would follow, with John bringing up the rear. Abraham watched Judas slide along the brick toward the open gate.

The detector began registering motion inside the fence again, coming straight for the gate, straight for Judas. Abraham signaled Judas to hold his position and steadied his own rifle behind the tree. The blotch on the detector’s small screen continued to move in the gate’s direction.

Abraham gave Judas the signal at the perfect time. Judas spun around the corner and opened fire, a clip emptied in the time it took Abraham to finally realize something was very wrong about all this. He had begun to ease out from his own position of cover when Judas’s body was blown outward through the gate from the force of a fusillade of bullets. Abraham tried to focus, but the sun caught something metallic and blinded him for the instant it would have taken him to aim.

Rat-tat-tat…

The automatic spray was undoubtedly from John’s M16, and Abraham’s vision at last sharpened to see his target. Whatever had emerged from the magazine had reflected sun like metal because it was metal. And not a man in a protective suit, either.

It was a robot!

All of a sudden Abraham realized Blaine McCracken hadn’t played into his hands at all; he had played into McCracken’s and now he was facing a madman’s version of backup.

Obie One seemed to be smiling as he aimed the gun attached to his right hand and opened fire.

“Did you see that? Did you see it?” Professor Ainsley beamed as Obie One fired a hail of bullets into the second disciple his sensors had locked onto.

“I’ll buy him a beer when he comes back in,” said McCracken.

“You mean a lube job,” Belamo quipped.

The picture of a second disciple being torn apart by Obie One’s bullets was transmitted by the snakelike Obie Four to the main board in Professor Reston Ainsley’s control truck. They had parked it back near Williamsburg’s eastern border, behind the cover provided by the Capitol Building. Blaine had known that defeating the disciples under normal conditions was not possible. He knew they would be waiting for him when he came for Virginia Maxwell at Gap headquarters and used this to set a trap — with Wareagle and himself as bait the disciples could not possibly resist.

The problem from the start had been how to snare them and where. Utilizing Professor Ainsley’s original Omicron legion for reinforcements had actually occurred to him as far back as his meeting with Takahashi; the logistics followed from there. What was needed, Ainsley had explained the previous day, was a confined space whose layout could be programmed into his robots, who would then be controlled from a short distance away. McCracken had originally feared Ainsley would laugh off his idea and send him packing. But the old man had embraced the plot with excitement and enthusiasm. Perhaps he just wanted to prove to the world that his creations could perform as no one ever believed they could.

The Gap’s location limited their options for the site of the final battle, Williamsburg by far the most advantageous given its proximity to Newport News. Yet there were problems. Yes, the Operational Ballistic Droids would still learn as they moved, but having to negotiate around so many structures could cause significant problems as the battle progressed. Another equally pressing problem was that the Obie series had been constructed purely with counterinsurgency in mind. No thought had been given to how the droids would perform when placed in the field with friendlies. Essentially, how would they distinguish the good guys from the bad? What was there to stop them from shooting anything that moved, including McCracken and Wareagle, if circumstances forced them out into the battle as well?

Ainsley had provided the solution to this in the truck — just minutes before — in the form of twin necklaces for Wareagle and McCracken. A small medallion around their necks would jam sensor mechanisms and thus exclude the two men as targets. The professor, meanwhile, had spent the better part of Sunday night programming the layout of Williamsburg into his Obies. He had managed to get all four operational, and of these the boxlike Obie Three, along with One and Four, were already in the field. The hulking shape of Obie Seven stood outside the truck, between the Capitol’s central pillars, waiting to be dispatched. The red LED lights that flashed across his eyeless head and chest made him look impatient to McCracken.

Right now, though, Blaine’s eyes were glued to the main monitor screen as Obie Four scanned the area.

“Where’s Abraham?”

Reston Ainsley punched some commands into his keyboard. “Obie One is still locked on to him. I’ll put him in pursuit mode.” And his fingers flew over the keys once more.

“Can you tell him to be cunning?”

“It’s built into his programming.”

“That’s good, because it’s built into Abraham’s, too.”

Even if Abraham had realized earlier he was facing a gray silver robot, there was nothing he could have done. The impossibility of its existence reached him an instant before the gun that was an extension of its right forearm began firing into John. John was blown backward, his Kevlar vest shredded by the robot’s powerful bullets, his head almost torn from his shoulders. Judas lay across from him, his corpse a mirror image.

Two of the disciples had been killed! By a robot, goddammit, a robot!

And he would end up the third unless he fled now, before the thing’s firing sensors locked on to him. Yes, a few well-placed grenades could splatter his steel guts as easily as flesh and blood ones. But the fact was, a single miscalculation in aim would cost Abraham his life — because the robot couldn’t miss.

Abraham bolted from the tree, back in the direction of Duke of Gloucester Street, his small, hand-held communicator raised to his lips.

“This is Abraham,” he said, and then did his best to explain to the remaining nine disciples what they were up against.

In the control truck behind the Capitol Building, Reston Ainsley punched another series of buttons. “I’m sending Obie Four to scout out the next group.”

“Make it fast. The disciples know what they’re up against now,” advised Blaine.

“They know only of Obie One.”

“Won’t be hard to figure out he didn’t come alone any more than we did.”

Ainsley looked almost pleased. “Then I suppose I should get to it.”

The disciples now moved in five pairs. On Abraham’s orders Thaddeus, the second of those badly injured, had joined him in the hunt for the killer robot at the Prentis Store at the intersection of Duke of Gloucester and Colonial streets. Abraham, the store giving him cover, held fast to the motion detector, but no sign of the robot appeared. The tight cluster of buildings was working in the robot’s favor here, offering a layer of confusing cover for the detector. Abraham had realized what had to be done even before Thaddeus came up alongside him.

“How is it?” Abraham asked him.

“It hurts,” Thaddeus replied, grimacing slightly. “But I can move.” Abraham nodded in apparent satisfaction and raised his communicator to his lips. “Continue your sweeps,” he ordered. “Check all buildings and shops. Find their headquarters. Keep me informed.”

Abraham clicked off his communicator and looked back at Thaddeus. “Take the rear. Stay ten yards behind me.”

Thaddeus nodded, then asked, “Where are we going?”

“Where else? After the robot….”

“What now?” Blaine asked Reston Ainsley.

He had barely completed the question when a series of red lights began flashing on the main console. The professor slid himself over to it.

“Obie Four has locked on to another pair of the monsters. Let’s have a look, shall we?”

Ainsley punched a button on his console and the view from the snakelike reconnaissance droid filled the screen. Obie Four had the ability to plow under and then come back up through solid asphalt if necessary. Ainsley explained that its entire length was essentially a drill that spun at blinding speed, enabling it to burrow inside virtually any substance. Only the very base of its head had to rise back to the surface to provide them with a picture, much like a submarine’s periscope.

The screen sharpened to reveal a pair of the disciples veering off Palace Street toward the Brush-Everard House. Directly behind them now was the wide, grassy expanse of the Palace Green Obie Four had burrowed up through. The disciples made their way warily down the walk, then kicked open the door without testing the knob.

“No respect for property,” Blaine quipped.

“Neither does Obie Three, I’m afraid — and fortunately he’s in the area,” said Ainsley.

With that he keyed in Obie Three’s access code and swept his fingers across the control keyboard. A slight adjustment of Obie Four’s camera allowed the occupants of the truck to see the boxlike figure of Obie Three emerge from the cover of the shell of a reconstructed colonial theater three buildings to the right of the Brush-Everard House. Ainsley brought Obie Three up the house’s front walk, in essence following in the footsteps of the two disciples who had entered. Then another series of commands from Ainsley had the droid’s top sliding open to allow its multiple extremities to ease upward and out. One of them held a powerful explosive that looked like two Frisbees squeezed against each other. It placed the charge upon the front steps and then affixed a detonator to it with a second and more adroit extremity. What might have been a steel finger flipped a switch.

On Professor Ainsley’s control board, a light on the lower panel switched from green to red.

“It’s armed,” he said, and returned his attention to Obie Four’s monitor screen.

Professor Ainsley kept his eyes on the monitor while his fingers flew across the keyboard to issue Obie Three instructions, which moved it to a safe distance. His finger then eased to a button beneath the light that had been flashing red for ten seconds now.

“We wait until we see them emerge,” he explained. “That way we’re sure.” Ainsley looked back at McCracken. “You want to do the honors?”

“The pleasure’s all yours, Professor.”

“Yes,” Ainsley acknowledged. “It certainly is.”

At that point the two disciples appeared on Obie Four’s screen, approaching the door they had kicked open. Reston Ainsley waited one last second and then pressed the button.

For some reason, Blaine had been expecting a smaller, more contained explosion. What followed was a blinding, horrific blast as the better part of the Brush-Everard House’s front half fragmented into wood shards and splinters that blew out from the fireball. He never saw the disciples; they simply vanished into the oblivion of the blast, consumed by it. The screen cleared to reveal flames picking at the ruined shell of a building, charred portions still falling from the sky.

“That makes four down, Professor,” Blaine said.

“Still eight to go, chief,” Belamo reminded him.

Nonetheless, McCracken was about to give Ainsley a celebratory slap on the shoulder when a new explosion sounded from another area of the park. He barely had time to wonder what it was when Obie One’s control board flickered once and then went dead.

Abraham respected the prowess of the foe he was facing here. The robot’s programming made it a virtually indestructible and independently acting machine. In a confined area, the layout of which was certain to have been programmed into its microchip circuitry, it would inevitably track him down before he could possibly track it. His only hope lay in using that knowledge to his advantage.

That was why he had summoned Thaddeus, why he had the wounded disciple watch his rear. As bait, a sacrifice. He knew the robot would close from the rear, and, in the instant its sensors and firing mechanism were locked on to Thaddeus, Abraham would take his shots. If he missed, the robot would have him, too, but he didn’t plan on missing. As an added precaution, he was careful to keep himself as much in line with Thaddeus as possible, hoping this would confuse the robot into believing the motion it detected was that of a single man, not two.

Abraham knew his M16 by itself was useless against the robot’s steel composition. But the grenade launcher built into its bottom was something else again. He hadn’t had time to get in the shots he needed when the thing had killed John and Judas. Now he would.

This, of course, was just the preliminaries. McCracken and the Indian might be content to let the robot fight their battles for them, but once that robot was neutralized they would have no choice other than to show themselves.

He was passing behind the William Waters House when the blast reached his ears; he turned in time to see a cloud of debris hurtling into the sky from the Palace Street area. No screams followed, but he knew all the same he’d lost another pair of his number. Could there be more robots than the one he was after? Yes, there had to be. He felt an unfamiliar chill of anxiety, perhaps a flutter of fear. McCracken was even better than he had expected.

“Abraham!”

Thaddeus’s scream reached him a breath ahead of the nonstop clacking of the robot’s built-in gun. He turned to see Thaddeus’s body being pulverized by bullets, literally torn apart before he was even able to fire a shot. Abraham leveled his grenade launcher toward the robot and fired. The charge whoooooshed out dead on line with the thing. Impact tore away the entire right side of the robot’s midsection and part of its head. The thing staggered, listing, but incredibly turned on Abraham to fire just as he sighted in with another grenade.

This time the explosive impact blew off the rest of the thing’s midsection to below the torso. Its leg extremities continued waddling about briefly before keeling over.

Abraham charged on in the direction of the plume of black smoke still rising over Palace Street. More of the machines were about; if he were going to draw McCracken and Wareagle from their hiding place, he would have to take out the machines first. The rest of the disciples meant nothing to him now. Whether they survived or not was meaningless, as were their parts in the remainder of the plan. McCracken mattered, and beyond him the Indian.

Abraham was heading toward a ruined building across the Palace Green when a strange impression carved into the ground caught his eye. It was perfectly cylindrical and deep, like a gopher hole made in dirt. Abraham suddenly had a very clear idea about what it was he was looking for.

As well as how to find it.

“They killed Obie One,” was all the transfixed Ainsley could say. “They killed him.”

Ainsley wheeled himself to the console controlling the monstrous Obie Seven and flipped on the control switch. Outside, near the Capitol’s pillars, a red light locked on in the center of the huge robot’s head. The arms that housed the specially modified Vulcan 7.62-mm miniguns snapped up to forty-five degree angles from locked positions at his side.

Blaine grabbed Ainsley’s hands before he could press any more switches.

“Not now, Professor!”

“What are you saying?”

“That they’re not concentrated enough for Seven to do us any good yet. He’ll get a few of them, and then they’ll get him.” Blaine paused. “Just like Obie One.”

Ainsley stiffened. “We can’t have that.”

“No, we can’t. Stick with the plan. Bunch them up, force them together, and then sic Obie Seven on them.” McCracken, Belamo, Patty Hunsecker, even Johnny let their eyes wander in the direction of the professor’s — out the rear of the truck, toward the menacing shape of Obie Seven.

“You’ll tell me when,” Ainsley said to Blaine.

“I’ll tell you, all right.”

Reluctantly the professor wheeled himself back to the main control console, where a flashing yellow light alerted him that Obie Four had locked on to the position of another pair of disciples.

“We’ve got scores to settle now,” he said to the two machines still active in the park.

Having completed their assigned sweep, Thomas and James moved down Duke of Gloucester Street with twin automatic rifles leveled before them. They saw none of the other disciples and knew, as the rest of the survivors did, that their number had been cut by at least a third. They were on the defensive now, searching for machines as well as men, the hunted as much as the hunters.

Against his better judgment, Thomas raised the communicator to his lips.

“Abraham,” he called. “Abraham…”

No response came. Could the best of their number have been killed in one of the two blasts that had come just minutes before? No. Much more likely, he was merely keeping radio silence. The reasons didn’t matter. Thomas and James would keep it as well.

The sweeps of the disciple team were concentric in nature, designed to bring them together near the end of Duke of Gloucester Street. If McCracken and the Indian had not been found by then, there would be precious few places left they could be, and these few could be better covered in larger groups. Thomas and James walked toward the rendezvous point uncertain and uneasy, the scent of smoldering wood still thick in the air.

Obie Four surfaced twenty yards behind the pair of disciples as they proceeded along Duke of Gloucester Street between Colonial and Botetourt. Reston Ainsley checked Obie Three’s position and nodded happily. “Got you, you bastards,” he said out loud.

“Where’s Obie Three, Professor?” McCracken asked.

Ainsley had the snakelike head of Obie Four pan to the right and asked for a close-up. An old-fashioned picket fence sharpened into view between a pair of buildings just across Botetourt Street.

“Coming up on this spot,” Ainsley announced. And, as if on cue, the boxy shape of the demolitions droid rolled onto the scene.

The professor pulled the picture back to capture the approaching disciples once more.

“Perfect,” Ainsley muttered. “We’ll get them here.”

Ainsley repeated the series of instructions he had issued in front of Brush-Everard House, telling Obie Three to plant another of his charges. A sudden beeping filled the cramped confines of the truck’s rear.

“Oh, no!”

“What is it, Professor?” McCracken asked from behind his shoulder.

“His top doors are jammed. Must have been damaged by debris from the last blast.”

“Check out the screen, Doc,” Sal Belamo urged.

Obie Four’s picture now showed the pair of disciples to be twenty yards from Obie Three’s position.

“Pull Obie Three out of there, Professor,” said McCracken.

“No, I can’t….”

“We’ll get another shot.”

The old man’s hair flew wildly about his face as he swung around in his wheelchair. “You don’t understand. I really can’t. One of its wheels is jammed on something. The advisors were worried about this sort of thing. It was one of the reasons the project was—”

“Yo, boys,” Belamo chimed in. “I see two Frankensteins almost to the corner.”

Professor Ainsley hesitated no longer. He turned his attention back to the console and hit a single button set apart from the rest at arm’s length. A large red bulb began to flash. The computer screen showed a countdown beginning at fifteen in huge LCD figures. “I’ve just ordered Obie Three to self-destruct.” A strange smile crossed his lips. “A suicide mission, that’s what this has become. My God, he would understand. I know he would.”

The countdown had reached seven.

“Professor—”

Before McCracken could speak further, a large figure charged into the picture being broadcast by Obie Four. He came from the side of the picture, rushing in from behind the pair of disciples five seconds before their deaths. The pair swung, weapons ready, as the figure leveled an M203 behind the fence where Obie Three was perched. A charge thumped out with a trail of smoke. When it cleared, a large section of the picket fence was gone — along with whatever had been behind it. The LCD countdown on the computer monitor was locked at two.

“Fuck me,” Belamo moaned.

“The explosives wouldn’t have been armed until the sequence was complete,” Ainsley said distantly. “He died for nothing.”

“Uh-oh,” moaned McCracken, his eyes back on the screen.

The group in the truck watched as the same large figure that had destroyed Obie Three grew in size, charging straight toward Obie Four in its exposed position on the other side of the street.

“No!” Ainsley screamed, working his keyboard feverishly.

He succeeded in turning Obie Four around, the screen’s picture spinning with him. But suddenly the picture filled with tremors, shapes rushing past in a blur as the snakelike reconnaissance droid was grabbed and pulled upward.

A face with a twisted half-smile, straw-colored hair, and the coldest eyes McCracken had ever seen filled the screen.

“Abraham,” Wareagle said. The big Indian’s stare searched out the deadliest disciple, certain Abraham could see him as well.

The face stayed centered for an elongated moment, as if Abraham could indeed see through and beyond the screen. Then everything turned to fuzz, and the signal was lost.

“Goddammit!” Ainsley shrieked.

He propelled himself across the truck’s cab, over to the console controlling Obie Seven. Blaine caught his trembling hand before it could reach the keyboard. “Not yet, Professor.”

“Get your hand off me!”

“No. You’re playing into their hands!” he said, looking at the screen which had become staticy. “You’re playing into his hands.”

“I can’t just sit here!”

McCracken tapped the old man’s wheelchair. “Yes, you can. You’ve got to.” His eyes turned to Wareagle, who had hoisted a crossbow he had made for himself years ago out of a duffel bag stowed in the corner. “Leave this to me and the Indian.”

“I’ve got a stake in this, too,” Ainsley said more quietly. “They were like my…”

“I know. The thing is the two of us specialize in settling scores.” His eyes turned in Obie Seven’s direction. “When the time’s right, he’ll get his chance.”

“What exactly are you planning to do?”

“Give Abraham exactly what he wants.” Blaine looked at Johnny. “Us.”

Chapter 33

Abraham had smashed the snakelike robot’s camera eye with his fist, then had twisted its steel frame into a monstrous knot. Still not satisfied, he proceeded to tear it apart with fingers that were steellike themselves. The ease of it amazed him. Somehow moments like these inevitably brought back memories of just how inadequate he had been before the jungle. Mere scraps of memory now, as distant from him as a normal man’s recollections of the limitations of early childhood. He turned back to Thomas and James.

“We’ve killed their toys. They’ll be coming now.” Just then, the remaining two pairs of disciples charged into the scene from opposite directions. They had been converging on the rendezvous point just as the latest explosion sounded. Abraham’s smile told them everything as they ground to a halt. In silence, the seven surviving disciples fanned out in a spread across the width of Duke of Gloucester Street.

McCracken checked his 9-mm pistols — each loaded with a fresh clip of Sal Belamo’s Splats — one last time before sliding out from the cover of the Capitol.

“You knew this was coming,” he said to Wareagle.

“I knew something was. Hanbelachia, Blainey, for both of us.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Indian, but once we draw them out, we give Obie Seven back there a ring.”

“Yes, Blainey,” Wareagle said in the tone he always used when the spirits had his other ear.

“Let’s move, Indian.”

They approached Duke of Gloucester Street the long way around, from the back of the Capitol Building. They walked side by side, steps in perfect unison. McCracken handled his pair of pistols loaded with Splats. Wareagle grasped one in his right hand, while his left held fast to a crossbow. Both had donned bulletproof vests, but neither expected them to do much good against the kind of firepower the disciples were wielding, not to mention the aim they were capable of.

“We’re almost to Duke of Gloucester Street, Professor,” Blaine said into the microphone concealed beneath the lapel of his jacket.

“Obie Seven’s ready on your signal.”

“Make sure he doesn’t roll until I give the word.”

“As you wish.”

They reached the eastern edge of Duke of Gloucester Street and stopped dead. There, spread across the street two hundred yards before them, were the seven remaining disciples; Abraham was in the very center. “Just like an old-fashioned gunfight, Indian.”

“That’s what they were hoping for, Blainey.”

“Well, let’s give it to them.” They started walking.

“How far before they start firing, Johnny?”

“Seventy-five yards.”

“We’ll walk fifty — then call for Obie Seven. He takes out four or five more of them, we clean up the rest.” Wareagle said nothing.

“Steady,” ordered Abraham, just loud enough for the three disciples flanking him on either side to hear. “No one fires until I say so.”

Several of the others shifted uneasily, and he sensed their impatience.

“We’ve got what we want,” he offered as explanation. “But we’ve got to be sure this time.”

James spoke with his eye glued to the long-range sight on his rifle. “I can hit them from here. Head shots. Neat and clean.”

“Wait,” Abraham said suddenly. “They wouldn’t be doing this if they didn’t want us to respond precisely as we are. We’ve…missed something.”

“We couldn’t have. There’s nothing,” another voice shot back.

“We should open fire now!” a third insisted.

“Not until we’re sure. Not until we’ve all got shots.”

“You know what they’re doing, don’t you?” Patty Hunsecker said accusingly to Sal Belamo as he struggled for a view of what was transpiring on Duke of Gloucester Street.

“Lady, I don’t know—”

“You do! I know you do! They’re sacrificing themselves, using themselves as bait. To draw those…things out, so Ainsley’s monstrosity can finish them off.”

Belamo tilted his head toward the area beyond. “The real monstrosities are those Frankensteins out there. And MacBalls knows the key is makin’ sure they don’t get outta here.”

“He didn’t take you with him,” Patty said abruptly.

“Huh?”

“If he really thought he had a chance, he’d have taken you.”

There was a brief crackle of static before the soft echo of McCracken’s voice rose from Sal’s walkie-talkie.

“It’s show time, boys,” Blaine called. “Send the big fella in.”

“With pleasure,” Ainsley said.

The professor’s attempted activation of Obie Seven, though, brought the most feared phrase possible flashing across his monitor: NOT PROCESSING.

“Yo, Professor,” Sal Belamo yelled to him, “he’s not going anywhere.”

“No,” Ainsley said, mostly to himself, as he worked the keyboard desperately, “he isn’t.”

“MacBalls!” Blaine heard Sal Belamo yell into his ear. “You guys got to pull out. The big guy ain’t ready for his walk.”

“What the fuck’s going on?”

“I can’t get him on line!” Ainsley screeched. “His programming won’t accept the sequence!”

“Get outta there, boss.”

The flurry of fire from the disciples began just as Blaine and Johnny dived toward opposite sides of Duke of Gloucester Street.

“After them!” Abraham screamed above the booming reports from their weapons.

The disciples took off in seven separate directions, certain to catch their quarries in the spread. They could smell victory now, the taste of it as welcome as blood.

They liked the taste.

McCracken and Wareagle’s only chance for survival was to separate, splinter the opposing forces, and buy themselves the time it took for Ainsley to get Obie Seven working.

Fucking thing must have blown a fuse! McCracken thought to himself, going for a little humor.

But the humor swiftly vanished as something else occurred to him. This unexpected breakdown not only forced Johnny and him into flight, it also left Patty, Sal, and Ainsley exposed back at the Capitol. If the disciples chose to concentrate their efforts toward that end, three corpses would greet Blaine…if he managed to stay alive and get back there. No, he told himself, the disciples would only be thinking in terms of Wareagle and himself for the moment. Their vision was sharp but narrow. With Blaine and Johnny in their sights now, they would sweep the rest of Williamsburg only after their two primary targets had been dispatched.

All the more reason to stay alive.

Blaine headed south briefly, hit Francis Street and swung west, keeping to the cover of buildings as best he could.

“You read me, Sal?”

“Still fucked at this end, boss.”

“Don’t break radio silence, no matter what. Let me have the first word. Talk to you soon.”

“Roger.”

Blaine kept moving. He knew the disciples would be circling in an attempt to enclose him. His two major priorities were to draw them away from the Capitol on Williamsburg’s eastern perimeter and find safe haven for himself until Ainsley got Obie Seven back on line. He moved quickly, using the buildings for cover and darting between them only after being certain none of the disciples were about. He heard their footsteps on several occasions, but was fortunate enough to be near heavy concentrations of bushes or a hefty porch that provided concealment each time.

He ended up amid a thick nest of buildings between Colonial and Botetourt streets. Plenty of places to find cover that would make the disciples spend extra time trying to locate him. He would hold off using his pistols for as long as he could, since using them would alert them to his location, and Blaine was not in the self-sacrificing mood.

McCracken stayed to the rear of the James Anderson House, moving among the seven reconstructed forges that dominated the Blacksmith Shop. His hand strayed to one of the brick forges and came away singed. The damn coals were still hot; a quick gaze inside showed Blaine hot pokers of steel, their edges glowing reddish-orange.

He was thinking about how the occupants of Williamsburg must have truly dropped everything and run, thanks to Sal Belamo, when a flash of gun metal appeared just ahead of the figure; one of the disciples about to round the corner.

Johnny Wareagle stuck to the area of Nicholson Street, heading northwest. He could feel the eyes of three of the Wakinyan searching for him and sensed none of them belonged to Abraham. This comforted him, for, above all, he knew that it was his Hanbelachia to face the most fearsome of these monsters. He had known this since they had seen each other briefly in Philadelphia. The confrontation might come here in Williamsburg, or it might come later, but it would come.

Johnny’s communicator had stayed silent since his split from McCracken back on Duke of Gloucester Street. He knew the call would come when Ainsley got his final and most impressive droid on line. He only needed to keep himself hidden from the Wakinyan until then.

Johnny passed near North England Street, hugging the rear white-frame expanse of the Peyton-Randolph House. Fields and brush lay before him in this more rustic section of Williamsburg. Set in a clearing, detached and by itself, lay a fenced-in windmill. The sailcloth wheel spun quickly in the stiff breeze. Johnny remembered how it had helped grind the corn when he was young and still living on the reservation. It looked and smelled of home, and he took this as a sign from the spirits.

Crouching low, he made a quick dash for the steep steps leading into the building the wheel was attached to. The structure supporting the windmill was propped up on a base of logs, the reconstruction perfect in all respects. Wareagle thought he might find refuge inside.

He felt the presence just as he passed through the entrance, felt it in time to dive for the floor just as the muzzle flashes erupted and bullets split the air above him.

The disciple’s angle of approach had prevented him from firing when McCracken lunged. He managed to squeeze the trigger, but Blaine had already locked a hand on the stock and shoved the M16 away. Equal to the task, the disciple had responded by shoving Blaine in the direction his momentum had already taken him, launching out with a kick. McCracken took the impact in his bent knee and felt it buckle. The leg went numb and rubbery, but he kept himself from falling. He’d learned his lesson from facing another disciple down in Rio. He could not let things be drawn out, especially not with reinforcements as close as a scream away.

Still holding tight to the rifle, McCracken faked falling. The disciple released his right hand from the grip and formed it into a fist; he would try for a killing strike to Blaine’s throat or face. McCracken was ready. He avoided the blow with a deft twist and lowering of his head. In the same motion he tore the rifle from the disciple’s remaining hand and heard it smack into the brick forge behind him. Blaine whipped one of the pistols from his belt, only to have the disciple kick it into the air, where it landed in a nest of hot coals.

The disciple reached into one of the forges for a red-hot poker, which was glowing at the tip. McCracken probed desperately behind him and found its twin, burning his hand in the process.

The disciple came in first with an overhead blow. Blaine deflected it and tried to use his poker with a backlash motion. The disciple simply ducked and brought his weapon hard into Blaine’s ribs in roundhouse fashion. McCracken lost his breath in a throaty gasp. The blow had stunned him, but he recovered his senses in time to see the disciple lunging at him, aiming the poker’s glowing tip straight for him. McCracken turned at the last instant, knocking the blow aside and ramming his own poker into the side of the disciple’s face.

Now it was his opponent who gasped. A hiss sounded as flesh burned and blackened and a bulging welt swelled across the disciple’s right cheek and jaw. But the disciple came back at him as if he hadn’t felt anything. A damaging blow was headed for Blaine’s collarbone, but he deflected it enough to turn the impact into a mere graze. He tried to retaliate, but the disciple had launched a furious flurry of blows with both the poker and his free hand. McCracken barely managed to ward him off as he was forced backward against a forge that was still burning with a white-hot coal fire. The poker slid from his hand, his injured leg giving way as he stooped to retrieve it.

Seeing the opening, the disciple reared back and launched a savage overhead strike with the poker. At the last moment, McCracken threw up both hands in an X-block that caught his opponent’s wrist between his forearms. The poker flirted with the top of his skull and, as the disciple drew it overhead once more, Blaine rammed a foot up into his groin.

The disciple’s eyes bulged. As he doubled over, Blaine grabbed him by the bulk of his Kevlar vest and brought him forward, facefirst, toward the white-hot flames. Blaine felt his own hands paying part of the price as he jammed the disciple’s face and chest against the sizzling coals. McCracken heard the ssssssssssss and was assaulted by the sickening aroma of frying flesh and hair. He waited until it had all but subsided before releasing the pressure on the twitching frame. He regained his feet and dashed away, the scent still fresh in his nostrils.

Wareagle kicked out at blinding speed toward the source of the muzzle flashes. It was like a cartwheel — with his hands down, his legs spun around like a propeller. His feet struck the rifle square in the stock and separated it from the Wakinyan’s hands. The Wakinyan whipped out a pistol, but as Johnny lunged back to his feet he locked his hand on the wrist holding the gun before it could fire. The disciple was at least eight inches shorter than Johnny, but he looked up into the Indian’s eyes and smiled at him. The test of strength was going his way. The gun was coming back up almost in line with Johnny’s face, the disciple’s finger still on the trigger. Their free arms had locked, and they were grappling with each other like wrestlers.

The Wakinyan smiled again. He was winning.

Because Johnny wanted him to.

The wind-driven grinding stones on the Wakinyan’s right side squeezed against each other like a huge mouthful of chomping teeth. The process was continuous: lower, grind, separate, rise…lower, grind, separate, rise…

Johnny knew the disciple would wait until his shot was sure, wait until Johnny had a long moment to contemplate his own death. Wareagle let that moment start with his eyes staring down the pistol’s bore for a microsecond. Then he jerked the disciple’s gun hand across his body, back and to the side. He timed the move for the exact moment the stones were separated enough to allow for the hand and arm to pass between them, in the instant before they began to lower again. Flesh tore, and Wareagle’s ears were burned by the sound of bones being ground to pulp. The Wakinyan’s eyes bulged in agony. Wareagle’s free hand clamped down over his mouth to muffle his screams, then drew the head toward him before jamming it backward against the grinding mechanism.

The skull shattered with a pop! Blood and brains splattered the walls. The Wakinyan’s eyes locked unseeingly with Johnny’s. Blood streamed from his nostrils. Wareagle left him there and headed back for the door.

“What the fuck, Professor?” Sal Belamo shouted back into the truck from his post near Obie Seven.

“I’m trying! I’m trying!”

“Ain’t good enough, chief.”

Patty Hunsecker emerged from the truck with machine gun in hand. “We’ve got to go out there, Sal. We’ve got to help them.”

“What you gotta do is stay here. Like you were told.”

“Screw what I was told!”

She made a motion to leave on her own, and Belamo restrained her. “MacBalls wants you safe, and that’s the way you’re gonna stay,” he said quite calmly.

“You read me, Sal?” jabbered Belamo’s communicator almost on cue.

“Got ya, boss.”

“Any luck?”

“Professor says he’s almost got it licked.”

“Almost ain’t good enough. Case you didn’t notice, we got a situation here.”

“Just stay out of sight a little longer, boss.”

“No can do, Sal. No can do at all.”

McCracken ended up back in the center of Duke of Gloucester Street, pursuit having forced him that way. He whipped his remaining pistol out just as Johnny Wareagle emerged between a pair of buildings directly in front of him, crossbow in hand. They had barely met each other’s gaze when the remaining disciples appeared, three from the west end of the street led by Abraham and two others from the east end, effectively enclosing them. “No more running, Indian.”

“Indeed, Blainey.”

A hundred and fifty yards separated them from the disciples at either end of the street. The Splats in Blaine’s pistol were effective from only fifty yards and less, giving the disciples even more of an advantage.

“Good idea to bring the crossbow, Johnny.”

“I’ll take west, Blainey.”

“East sounds fine to me.”

As he spoke the disciples began to move forward.

“We’ve got to do something!” Patty yelled at Sal Belamo as he sprinted back for the truck.

“Just what I had in my mind, lady.”

While Professor Ainsley continued working feverishly on his keyboard, Belamo grabbed an automatic chambering shotgun and rushed back for the front of the Capitol Building.

Patty blocked his path. “You stopped me from leaving, and now I’m stopping you! You go out there and you’ll get killed. We’ll all get killed! You’ve got to get that damn thing working!”

“Right,” Sal snapped as he raised the butt of his shotgun in front of Obie Seven’s chest, “I’ll just give him a smack and the reception will turn crystal clear.”

In frustration Belamo did just that and, suddenly, lights flashed everywhere inside of Obie Seven’s oblong head. Its cylindrical hand openings returned to their ready position, 7.62-mm miniguns locked and loaded. Its tread began to roll through the arches of the Capitol toward Duke of Gloucester Street.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” muttered Sal.

Johnny tightened his grip on the crossbow as the Wakinyan slid closer. It was suspended near his midsection, held in both hands so he could load it with a fresh arrow; less than two seconds after firing. But that wasn’t good enough, Blaine knew. He had to figure out a way to use the Splats to at least slow them down.

A hundred and twenty-five yards…

Blaine suddenly thought about the many buildings the disciples had to pass between on their way to the kill. The colonial structures were constructed of heavy wood and brick with lots of windows dotting their exteriors.

Lots of glass.

Fire an exploding bullet into a few and that glass might, might, shatter into deadly flying projectiles. It would buy Johnny some time for his crossbow, if nothing else. But none of that would work until the disciples were dangerously close.

He felt Johnny’s hand coming for him before the blow lashed hard against his side. Impact from the big Indian’s shove pitched him airborne off the street, behind the cover of a huge chestnut tree.

“Johnny!”

His scream reached Wareagle as his first arrow shot outward from his bow, another following in its place as the bullets punched into the big Indian and drove him backward. He saw blood leap out as Wareagle went down.

“Johnny!”

McCracken lunged out from behind the tree and threw his body over Johnny’s. He grabbed the Indian’s pistol from his belt and fired it, along with his own, at the buildings as planned. But the Splats’s limited range merely created a path of debris and destruction through which the disciples continued to converge on them. Blaine had grasped Johnny’s crossbow when they opened fire on him from Abraham’s side of Duke of Gloucester Street. A trio of hits into his Kevlar chest protector blew him backward, and he groped desperately for one of the pistols again.

So this is how it ends.

He remembered forming that thought, when his eyes locked on the most wonderful sight ever. Rolling fast down Duke of Gloucester Street, from the area of the Capitol, came Obie Seven. Massive and ominous, the last of Professor Ainsley’s droids tore forward toward the disciples, approaching from the east. They swung, and one of them fired a grenade that exploded just in front of the droid, but Obie Seven rotated his torso slightly and kept on coming.

If the sight of him had been the greatest ever, then the sound that came next rivaled it. A metallic clanging burned through Blaine’s ears as the dual miniguns blasted an incessant hail of fire toward the two disciples closest to him. Obie-Seven might have appeared to be the most advanced of the OBD series, but in essence he was the most simple. In design he was powered by a tanklike tread. His torso could spin in a full 360-degree turn on top of a four-and-a-half-foot-high square base. His oblong head contained his visual sensors, which were programmed to find — and fire — at motion.

Any motion.

Blaine saw his dual cannons fix on the first pair of disciples and literally tear them apart with targeted fire. Obie Seven never even stopped through it all, just rolled right past then-ravaged bodies as a hail of bullets from the west end of the street greeted him. When even a pair of direct grenade strikes didn’t slow him in the least, Abraham and the two other remaining disciples abandoned the battle and attempted to flee. Obie Seven traced their motions and rotated his arm extremities accordingly. The resulting paths of gunfire stitched lines of total destruction through colonial Williamsburg as Seven sought out his prey. Windows exploded. Huge segments of structures blew apart and showered into the air. A few of the smaller buildings collapsed under the onslaught. Some of the larger ones had been peppered with enough gunfire to look as if they had been through the Civil War for real this time.

Blaine had to cover his ears from the clamor when the droid moved between Johnny and him, safe in the knowledge that the medallion flopping near his chest would keep the robot from firing on them. McCracken saw one disciple literally blown to pieces by the robot’s fire and a second perish when its fire obliterated a small stand he had taken refuge behind. In all, Obie Seven’s fire raged for just over a minute. That period saw him expend sixteen hundred rounds of ammunition, which filled the air with the smell of sulphur and cordite. Smoke rose from the debris created in the paths the disciples had used trying to escape. There was nothing still standing in that grid that did not show the effects of the droid’s powerful bullets.

“Johnny,” Blaine muttered, moving his way. “Johnny…”

He reached him expecting the worst. What greeted him was the slightest of smiles from the Indian.

“It seems we have found an able partner at last, Blainey.”

“You’re alive! You son of a bitch, you’re alive! Why the fuck didn’t you say something?”

Wareagle raised himself gingerly to a sitting position. The front of his Kevlar vest showed a dozen splotches where hits had been recorded. The blood had sprouted from a flesh wound just above his collarbone. Blaine knew Johnny wouldn’t bother to feel it until he was ready.

“I didn’t come around until our friend made his appearance. You wouldn’t have heard me at that point.”

“I’ll say.”

With that Obie Seven’s torso suddenly whirled. Its empty miniguns traced a diagonal path across to the northwest of Williamsburg and the Governor’s Palace. A continuous beeping sound was its way of pleading for more ammunition.

“Abraham,” Johnny said.

“No way, Indian. No way.”

“He’s out there, Blainey.”

“He couldn’t have survived all that. No one could.”

“I feel him,” Wareagle insisted, trying unsuccessfully to get up.

“Take it easy, Johnny,” Blaine said. “This one’s on me.”

He palmed one of the pistols loaded with Splats and rushed off to the northwest.

The Governor’s Palace was a stately baked red brick building enclosed by the most elaborate landscaping Williamsburg had to offer. McCracken approached warily. Mazelike in construction, the exterior offered an infinite number of hiding places. But Blaine knew Abraham would be after escape, not concealment, and tuned his thoughts accordingly. The disciple would not have entered the building itself because it would give Blaine the advantage of a confined space to work in. A faint hope that Johnny was wrong, that Abraham had perished with the others, flickered inside McCracken. Only Johnny wouldn’t — couldn’t — be wrong about something like that. If he felt Abraham was still alive, then Abraham was still alive.

Blaine passed through the tall iron gate and looked quickly around the grounds. It was a sound, though, that grabbed his attention, from somewhere on the right. Familiar somehow, but what? The sound came again, a deep chortling.

It was a horse, a goddamn horse!

McCracken bolted for the stables on the eastern side of the grounds, sure now of how Abraham intended to make his escape. Blaine had reached the closed double doors out of breath and was raising his pistol when the doors blew outward. A team of horses, latched to a carriage Abraham rode from a standing position, charged straight for him. The pounding hooves made the ground tremble. Blaine tried to keep his balance to steady his shot, but one of the horses’ hindquarters slammed into him, knocking him senseless. The pistol went flying. Abraham snapped the reins and tore off across the fields.

By the time Blaine recovered both his pistol and his bearings, the final disciple had passed out of range on Lafayette Street, en route to the main roads away from Williamsburg.

Halfway back to Duke of Gloucester Street, McCracken met up with Sal Belamo and Johnny Wareagle. Patty Hunsecker was pushing Professor Ainsley’s wheelchair in an attempt to keep up. Wareagle was walking gingerly, a makeshift bandage already tied around his bleeding shoulder wound. His eyes asked the question for him. Blaine’s answered.

“Can you believe what Obie Seven did?” Ainsley said after Patty and he had caught up to them. “Can you believe it? Amazing! Truly amazing!”

“He missed one, Professor.”

The professor looked disappointed. “Oh.”

“I missed him, too.”

“We will find him, Blainey,” Wareagle said.

“For sure, Indian. But it won’t be here. Time to haul ass.”

“Where to, boss?” Belamo asked.

“Tell you once we’re on our way.”

Chapter 34

Virginia Maxwell’s summer home in Hampton Roads, Virginia, was a sprawling estate that had been in the family for generations, long before the town had become a popular spot for vacationers. The guards who had surrounded the area since late in the afternoon did so openly, their show of force obvious. Gossip would result, though not a great deal. Plenty of important Washington types kept homes in the area. Security guards, both uniformed and otherwise, were not an unusual sight.

By the time darkness fell, there were twenty patrolling the three-acre grounds. Virginia Maxwell spent the evening alone, and allowed herself a pair of brandies in anticipation of retiring early. Guards had been stationed both inside and outside her bedroom all evening, and Maxwell felt safe in locking the door behind her. Two guards would spend the night in chairs by her door, a shout away. Relaxed in her bedclothes, she sat down in her favorite chair to read for a bit.

The hand closed over her mouth as she opened to her place in the book.

“Hello, Maxie.”

The book fell to the rug. At first Virginia Maxwell’s bulging eyes swam wildly, then they were drawn to the cold stare of Blaine McCracken.

“You would do well to keep quiet. Screaming won’t end pleasantly for either of us.” McCracken took his hand away. Virginia Maxwell did not scream.

“How?” she managed.

“Did I get in or remain undetected? Neither was all that difficult. You really should hire better people next time. I’ve been in this room for hours.”

McCracken came around to the front of the chair and loomed over her.

“It’s over, Maxie.”

“And that’s why you’re here?”

“Not quite. I meant it’s over for you. I’ve still got some unfinished business. You heard about Williamsburg.”

“Some. Enough.”

“I hoped to use you as bait to lure the disciples there. Neat trick with the double. Almost worked. But you wanted me so badly, your legion walked right into the trap and now they’re finished. Your project is finished.”

“Then you’re here to kill me.”

Blaine shook his head. “Not my style.”

She regarded him questioningly.

“Abraham got away, Maxie. I want him, and I want you to deliver.”

“Abraham’s…alive?” Her surprise looked genuine.

“The sole survivor.”

So there was still a slight ray of hope for the operation. Virginia Maxwell’s eyes darted briefly to the door. If she screamed now, what chance was there the guards could burst in and kill McCracken before he killed her? None at all, reason told her and, more than that, without the rest of the disciples the project could not go forward. Another time, perhaps, but not now, not effectively.

“You want me to help you?” she asked incredulously.

“We can help each other.”

“How?”

“It’s all finished. You know that as well as I do. Takahashi gave me the list. I know the identities of you and the other Children of the Black Rain. I know about your plan to kill the president and your operation to destroy those nuclear power plants. Finally, without the disciples, I know the means to accomplish all this has been lost.”

“And how does that help me?”

“I’m going after the Children, Maxie, and I’ll find them no matter where they run. You know I will.”

“There’s still Abraham to consider.”

“My point exactly. You’re going to tell me where I can find him — and also the bunker where the Children have gone.”

“And in return…”

“I’ll let you live.”

“If I run away and disappear, of course.”

“Not at all. Just quit as director of the Gap. You can keep your money and your houses.”

“How benevolent.”

“I try.”

“I could scream for the guards now,” Virginia Maxwell snarled. “They’d kill you.”

“No, they wouldn’t, and then you’d die for nothing. Let’s talk, Maxie. It’s the best thing. Really.”

“And, of course, I trust you because you would never go back on your word.”

“You’re right; I wouldn’t.”

“Bastard!”

“You drew me into this. You’ve got no one to blame but yourself.”

She sighed. “What do you want?”

“For starters, where’s Abraham?”

“Listen to me, McCracken. If he hasn’t called in, it can only mean he’s going on with his part in the operation. He’s like a computer following its programming. You can’t stop him. No one can.”

“Try me.”

“He had two major roles in the operation, a second added after you killed one of the disciples in Rio — That was sabotaging one of the power plants: Pennsylvania Yankee.”

“A weather system’s distance from New York City, Boston, the whole upper East Coast…”

“Precisely. But his primary role was to assassinate the president.”

“Do you know how?”

“Only where and when. It’s tomorrow, as the presidential motorcade makes its way through Boston. But I can deal with that. A few well-placed phone calls and the president doesn’t leave Washington.”

“Which means we don’t get a shot at Abraham, risk him disappearing underground. No, Maxie. You’ll have to convince 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to go through with at least the facade of the motorcade. Leave the chief out of the limo, but make sure the limo rolls on schedule. Tell them it’s our only chance to catch a determined assassin. That’s language they can relate to.”

“Maybe.”

McCracken nodded. “Okay, so that leaves us with the Pennsylvania Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. I catch him there, and he doesn’t even make it to Boston.”

“He’s probably already been to the plant,” Virginia Maxwell said. “He’s had twelve hours since Williamsburg. Plenty of time.”

“And the timetable?”

“Everything was set to key off the assassination. Anytime after tomorrow morning and evening. It was left to the disciples’ discretion.”

Blaine looked at her very closely. “And now you’ve cost the operation these disciples. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that their presence at Gap headquarters was your doing. You knew they made for the only chance you’d have against the Indian and me so you took it. Now I’d say you’re an outcast in your own right. Otherwise, you would have gone to the bunker with the others.”

Virginia Maxwell’s first response was the slightest of smiles. Then she said, “A year from now we could still have an army of disciples in place. The power plant operation could be reactivated.”

“Toward what end?”

“Toward creating chaos — out of which a new order will be born. We would preside over that order, my dear. The nation would be ours to do with as we please.”

“What’s left of it, you mean.”

“All the better. We were Children born out of the worst chaos man has ever wrought. We were born to thrive in chaos, to want to make it happen simply because the remnants would belong to us.”

“A nuclear-ravaged wasteland.”

“But a land, all the same. Our land. A different America, one that would prosper on different terms. You have the list. You know the positions we have reached — positions from which centralized power can be wielded. The areas were hand-picked for us.”

“Too bad you can’t be a part of it anymore, Maxie. You know that. Your only hope to be anything is to help me. I’ll hunt them down with or without your help. Without means your name stays on the list. What’ll it be?”

“Damn you, McCracken!”

“Where’s the bunker, Maxie? Where can I find the rest of the Children?”

“Got it, Indian,” Blaine reported. He was back in the passenger seat of the car Wareagle had parked a quarter of a mile from Virginia Maxwell’s house. “Old Maxie decided to play ball.”

“Her route was chosen long ago, as ours was.”

“Well, thanks to that route, she’s going to alert the president for us. The motorcade will be staged to draw Abraham out, but the Secret Service will be ready to drop a net on him as soon as he shows.”

“I don’t think so, Blainey.”

“Let it go, Indian. We’ve got other—”

McCracken’s words were cut off by the explosion that shattered the night. The sudden brightness of the fireball forced him to shield his eyes even from a quarter of a mile away as the Hampton Roads home of Virginia Maxwell gave itself up to the flames.

“Abraham,” he said.

“A step ahead of us, Blainey. Abraham got to her. Abraham knew.”

“Which means he could have set the explosives for earlier, but he didn’t. He let Maxie talk to me. He wanted her to.”

“He wants to beat us.”

“Because of Williamsburg?”

“And something more. He wanted me to know where to find him. He wishes to face me.”

McCracken realized Johnny didn’t sound sorry. He looked back at the flames. “No help from the Secret Service now, Indian.”

“Just him and me.”

“Vision quest?”

“At last, Blainey.”

“And that’s where my father is?” Patty asked as the four of them gathered around the map placed over the coffee table. The area of the Utah Salt Flats was highlighted in red, a small x denoting the bunker’s position.

“According to Virginia Maxwell, yes,” Blaine confirmed.

“And what are you going to do?…Oh, go on with your planning. I didn’t mean to stop you.”

McCracken looked at Sal Belamo. “How many men did you say you can get?”

“A dozen I can trust. Another six I can kill if they fuck up.”

“You’ll need a plane to get there.”

“What are you going to do?” Patty angrily asked again. “My father’s in there! Do you hear me? My father!”

Blaine heard, and wished he hadn’t. He should have stuck with his instincts and not included Patty in this part of the plan. She had a stake in this, though. She deserved to know, and she deserved an opportunity to make her own decision.

“He’s one of them, Patty. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Yes, there is. Let me come with Sal. Let me talk to him.”

“You’d never get that far.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, Patty.”

Patty Hunsecker backed away, as if repulsed. “Listen to you. Listen to all of you. It’s over. You’ve won. These people don’t have to die.”

Blaine moved next to her, easing her further away from the table. “I warned you about what letting yourself become a part of this meant. Welcome to my world. It’s not much, but I call it home.”

“You’re not a murderer. I know you’re not.”

“That depends on your perspective. I wasn’t a murderer when I helped save your life at the circus in Rio, and Sal wasn’t a murderer when he saved the lives of you and your brothers ten days ago.”

Patty realized Johnny Wareagle had crept up silent as a cat behind her. “Each deed demands its own definition,” the Indian said. “We become prisoners of those definitions, each as unique as the person who seeks it.”

“What the two of you are saying is that I won’t sanction what you want to do, even if it’s necessary, because my family’s involved. I won’t deny that. I started all this to find out what happened to my father, and I’m not about to give up now that I’ve found out where he is!”

“He gave up on you first, kid.”

She shook her head. “Shit, McCracken! Stop trying to make everything sound so simple! Things just don’t work that way. There are repercussions, accounts to be settled.”

“Yes, the proverbial moral balance sheet. I’ve been there and back a hundred times, Hunsecker, and the picture’s always the same. There is no right or wrong, only cloudy levels of both. Through the muck, though, lines have to be drawn somewhere. Your father is part of something that meant to destroy much of the United States. We haven’t won as long as the Children are still out there — as long as he’s still out there.”

“So you kill him.”

“We do what we have to.”

“Say it!”

“Oh, I’ve got no problem with killing, Patty, not insofar as it means millions of lives are going to be saved.”

Patty Hunsecker wouldn’t back off. “You once told me one innocent life was as important to you as a million. You were talking about a young boy who’d been kidnapped, remember?”

“Your father isn’t innocent. Neither are the rest of the Children. I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Patty shouted, and stormed out of the motel room.

Johnny Wareagle touched Blaine’s shoulder. “You know where she will go if we don’t stop her, Blainey.”

“She’s got that much coming to her, Indian — if that’s what she wants.”

“Still, she is entering the crossfire, where bullets kill without aim or discretion.”

“She knows.”

“Does she?”

A thinly veiled smile crossed Blaine’s lips. “It’s what she has to do. That’s all.”

Sal Belamo cleared his throat. “And what I got to do is round up my team and head West. That rich bitch’ll probably beat me there, at this rate.”

“That’s my hope, Sal.”

McCracken reached the Pennsylvania Yankee Nuclear Power Plant at 10:00 the next morning. Maxie’s death confirmed that Abraham remained committed to fulfilling his role in the operation. A roundabout route to reach the site was thus mandated, and Blaine squeezed from it all the time he could.

“Look,” the guard at the front gate repeated, “I can’t let you in unless your name’s on this list.” He tapped his clipboard. “And it ain’t.”

“Call the shift supervisor.”

“Need a pretty good reason to do that.”

“How’s this?” Blaine asked the guard, pressing the pistol against his temple.

Every guard on duty at Pennsylvania Yankee had McCracken in their gun sights as Blaine and his hostage moved for the front of the complex. The main entrance was built in the shadow of the massive white tower that housed the nuclear reactor itself. He kept the steel barrel hard enough against the guard’s head to push the blood from the area, no doubt left as to the sincerity of his intentions. A man wearing a white shirt and tie met him on the front steps, his hands raised in the air.

“Let’s try and stay calm, shall we?” he said to Blaine.

“I’ve never been calmer. Who are you?”

“Jack Tunnel.”

“Supervisor?”

“Plant manager. Let that man go. We’ll talk. I promise.”

“I’m not here to talk, Mr. Tunnel.”

“Sir, you don’t realize what you’re doing. The penalty for unlawful entry into a nuclear facility qualifies—”

“Fuck penalties, Mr. Tunnel. An hour from now you’re not going to give a good goddamn about penalties unless you listen to me.”

“Let the man go. Then I’ll listen.”

McCracken drew his hostage closer and drew back the pistol’s hammer. “You’ll listen now, you son of a bitch. Your plant’s been sabotaged. Do you hear me? We’ve got maybe an hour to find out how and where or there’s gonna be one major hole in the ground come dinner.”

“You’re a terrorist? Is that what this is about?”

“Not me and not terrorism. Something much worse, Mr. Manager, and we’ve got no time to waste talking about it.”

Jack Tunnel’s eyes met McCracken’s and his expression changed. “Who are you?”

“Who I am doesn’t matter. You want to arrest me — fine. You want to call the FBI — fine. Just do it after you’ve shut down your reactors to check for explosives, to check for anything out of the ordinary.”

“Our security precautions make what you’re suggesting impossible.”

“I got through, didn’t I?”

“Not to the central core. You could shoot us all and still not get there.”

“But somebody else did late yesterday. Somebody no one here had reason to suspect.” The words came with his thoughts, as Blaine put it all together. “A surprise inspection by the NRC or Atomic Energy Commission. Noteworthy only for the fact that only a single man came out. Big. Straw-colored hair and deep blue eyes,” Blaine finished.

“Hey, chief,” said another shirt-and-tie man to Tunnel softly, “a guy from the AEC did show up around six….”

“How did you know?” Tunnel asked McCracken.

“Because it’s the way I would have done it.”

“And what else would you have done?”

Before Blaine could answer, the repetitive beep of a shrill alarm buzzed in their ears.

“All personnel to safe areas!” blared a mechanical, prerecorded voice. “All personnel to safe areas! We have a Code Red. Repeat: We have a Code Red.”

“Oh my God,” Tunnel muttered. “The control room, Tunnel!” McCracken shouted over the alarm. “Now!”

Chapter 35

Air Force One had come in on schedule to Logan Airport, and Arnold Triesman was counting his blessings. All things considered, the time Top Guy was in the air was the time he felt the most helpless. Couldn’t save Mr. Pres from a blown engine, a midair collision, or a missile. Nope, not even the Secret Service could do a damn thing until he was ground locked, which was when Triesman felt at least some measure of control.

Today’s agenda was simple, routine all the way. Top Guy lands at Boston’s Logan Airport, and then from the Callahan Tunnel takes the scenic route down Boylston Street to give as many locals as possible a gander en route to the Ritz Carlton Hotel for a luncheon with the governors from all the New England states. Airport time included, he’d be outside for no more than forty seconds and that was the name of the game. Rule number one: Ninety-nine point nine percent of all problems arose while Top Guy was outside. In a containable area or the safety of his rocketproof limo, no one was bothering.

Of course, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t try someday, and Triesman had a full complement of agents and police personnel scattered along the route — two hundred in all — as insurance. The agents didn’t bother camouflaging themselves. Indeed, they made sure everyone about could see their well-known earpieces just to create a presence. A presence made for the best prevention of all. Rule number two.

Triesman waited outside the Ritz Carlton and drank in the routine of it all. A trio of police helicopters buzzed the sky in a continuous sweep, the rooftop perimeter clear as could be. Triesman breathed easy. The mundane made for his lifeblood. The extraordinary he savored not at all.

Which was why the sudden squawk of his walkie-talkie shook him alert, making him fumble it as he raised it to his lips.

“Alley Cat, this is Stray Seven!” one of his field men called over the emergency channel.

“Come in, Stray Seven.”

“Alley Cat, you’re not going to believe this, but I think I saw him again.”

“Saw who again, Stray Seven?”

“The Indian, Alley Cat. The same damn giant Indian from Philadelphia.”

“Oh, fuck,” was all Arnold Triesman could say.

McCracken tossed his hostage aside on the way to the control room, and a number of guards converged on him immediately.

“Leave him alone!” Tunnel ordered. “He’s on our side.”

Inside the control center, which filled an oblong room at least fifteen hundred square feet, everything was chaos. Red lights flashed in so many places that a dull haze seemed painted over the white fluorescents.

“What’s going on?” Tunnel demanded of a man behind a central console who was feverishly pushing buttons.

“We lost the main pump to the cooling system.”

“What do you mean lost?”

“Valve blew. We’re losing a hundred gallons of flow a second.”

“A hundred gallons? How the fuck did we end up at Code Red so soon?”

The man at the console swallowed hard. “Because it’s been spilling for hours, even though all warning systems are running green.”

“Sabotage,” Jack Tunnel muttered, looking at McCracken. “Okay, seal the pipe and run a bypass.”

“I can’t, sir. The whole circuit board in the shaft must be down. Nothing’s responding.”

“Twenty minutes to critical stage,” blared the mechanical voice.

“What’s that mean?” Blaine asked Tunnel.

“It’s like this, friend. The secondary loop sends water to the primary — to cool the core and prevent the whole mess from going critical. Take away the cooling and the core superheats its way down until it hits ground water, which then blasts upward as a steam cloud. With the early warning system malfunctioning, we’re coming up on that now.”

“Meltdown,” Blaine concluded.

“The China Syndrome, to be precise.” Tunnel turned back to the console operator. “Okay, trigger the emergency core coolant and take us off line. Frank,” he called behind him, “order immediate evac of all nonessential personnel, and I do mean everyone.”

“Roger,” Frank said as he rushed away.

“Nineteen minutes to critical stage.…”

“Sir,” blared the console operator, “emergency coolant release not responding!”

Jack Tunnel leaned over the monitor board in disbelief. He swung back to McCracken with sweat pouring down his face.

“What the hell’s going on here?”

“You know better than I do.”

“But you knew before I did. What else? Tell me what else!”

“I don’t know. The saboteur could have anticipated every one of your possible responses and planned accordingly.”

“Oh, yeah? We’ll just see about that….” Tunnel grabbed a headset and pressed it to his ear and mouth. “Come in, Purdy.”

Yankee’s chief engineer came on the line, the sounds of men charging from the scene providing backdrop for his words.

“Read you, Jack.”

“We’re flat busted on this end. We been fucked and good. Valve circuits are down. Gonna have to run a bypass manually.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Got any volunteers?”

“Just one asshole down here stupid enough to even consider the job. I’m going remote. Give me forty seconds — then talk to me about what’s gotta be done.”

All of the forty seconds passed before the chief engineer’s voice came back over Tunnel’s headset. “Okay, Jack.”

Tunnel consulted the computer screen again. “It’s Valve 1275 that’s been blown. You gotta close it down and open 1374 in its place.”

“I’m almost suited up. Sounds simple enough.”

“Seventeen minutes to critical stage.…”

“It ain’t,” Tunnel said, his eyes on McCracken.

Thirty seconds elapsed before Purdy spoke again. His voice came into the control room over the main speaker now, accentuated by a slight echo.

“Okay, Jack. I’m opening Hatch 8B of the secondary loop. Got three other volunteers with me to provide backup if I need it. I’m leaving them up top for the time being…. Okay, I’m on the ladder and descending. I can see the water spewing from way up here. It’s already getting god-awful hot. Jesus Christ, I’m scared.”

“You’re doing fine, Purdy.”

“Okay, I’m down fifteen rungs, another twenty to the cat-walk above your blown valve. Piece of—”

A roaring blast cut off the rest of his words.

“Purdy!” Jack Tunnel yelled.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

The chief engineer’s scream was all Tunnel heard.

“What the hell’s happening down there? That sounded like a gun—”

“The chief was shot!” replied one of Purdy’s assistants. “Somebody down there shot the chief!”

“Jesus Christ! Can you see who did it?”

“Negative, but we will. Descending now.”

“Stay where you are, goddammit!”

“The chief may still be alive. We’re going down. Son of a bitch can’t get all three of us before we reach those valves.”

“Fifteen minutes to critical stage.…”

“Ten rungs covered,” the chief engineer’s assistant reported.

And then Blaine cursed himself for not seeing it from the start. “Tunnel, pull them back! Get them the hell out of there!”

Tunnel didn’t bother to question McCracken’s order. “Hold your position! Do you hear me? Stay where you are. That’s a goddamn order! Hold up and climb back the hell out of there!”

“Fifteen rungs,” the climber closest to the bottom called out.

A series of blasts sounded this time, rapid thumps sifting through the hiss of static. Screams and shouts followed, then a drawn-out wail.

“Benny’s hit!”

“He’s going down. Jesus Christ! I’m hit! Oh, god, I’m hit!”

“Get the hell out of there! Can anybody still hear me? Get the hell out of there!”

“This is Burt, Mr. Tunnel,” came a panicked voice trying desperately to compose itself. “Lost Benny, lost Sims. I’m hit in the leg. Climbing back up now.”

“Did you see anyone? Did you see who was doing the shooting?”

The only reply came from McCracken. “No one’s down there, Mr. Tunnel.”

“What the hell are you saying?”

“Our saboteur rigged a motion sensor to the trigger of an automatic weapon.”

“Christ! Who did all this?”

“Thirteen minutes to critical stage.…”

“Bypass that blown valve and we can still avert meltdown, though, right?”

“Sure, if there was a way to reach it in time.”

“Any other approach we can use?”

“Nothing direct, and direct’s all we’ve got time for.”

“Then that’s the way it’ll have to be.”

“I’m fresh out of volunteers, in case you didn’t notice.”

Blaine shook his head. “No, you’re not.”

The skeletal steel superstructure of the unfinished skyscraper made for perfect cover for Abraham. The high steel-workers normally manning its top floors, which were five hundred feet off the ground, were down on the sidewalk waiting for the presidential motorcade to pass along Boylston Street. This gave him freedom of movement in an area the sweep of helicopter surveillance would never think to investigate. The girders were all he had to move on, but they were enough, the shell providing his camouflage.

Abraham had chosen this viewpoint for effect more than anything. His sole weapon was the black transistorized detonator in his pocket. He had known from the outset that routine clearing of the streets would make a car bomb unfeasible. He also knew that blasting upward from the sewers below was dramatic but unreliable. Options eliminated, though, are often options gained, and out of what remained, he found the best one of all.

The yellow line painted down the center of the street, the one marking the lanes, was too good to be true, in his estimation. He had retrieved the C-12 plastic explosives, twenty times more potent than the common C-4, from the drop point and melted them down into a liquid form. Then, while the city slept the previous night, dressed in the garb of a public works official, he had gone over a twenty yard section of the line. Affixing the six ultrathin detonators, disguised in the same colored paint, into position was the only part Abraham had hurried through. He did not even have to inspect his handiwork to know it was perfect. Upon detonation, the plastique would reduce the road within its sphere to rubble, in the process blowing apart anyone and anything riding above. Even the president’s tank of a car would be reduced to shrapnel.

That car would be approaching any minute now.

Abraham had not slept in a very long time now. Since his rebirth, time had held a different meaning for him. It passed not in terms of days and hours, but in tasks and accomplishments. Behind him was the visit to the nuclear plant yesterday. Ahead of him was the murder of the president. Beyond that there was nothing.

He had gone to Pennsylvania Yankee in a disguise prepared for another disciple long before. He had descended into the bowels of the reactor’s secondary loop on a surprise inspection, watched only cursorily from the hatch above. He had reached the valve in question and affixed C-4 plastic explosive fully confident it would not be removed, even if discovered. Then he tacked on a sign: DO NOT REMOVE! ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION.

Anybody who got close enough to see the charge would read that sign. From there, he quickly located the main conduit that linked the computers to the thousands of valves and controls in the labyrinth of multicolored pipes. He placed another, smaller charge across it to cut off computer control as well as the early warning system. The valve charge would blow, and it would be well over an hour before anyone knew; by then the plant would be at the critical stage.

If that wasn’t enough, Abraham had taken precautions against manual interference as well. Besides the explosive charges, his tool satchel had held a 9-mm submachine gun complete with extended sixty-shot clip. Rigging it to fire upward — in the direction of the nearest access ladder — was no problem at all. Neither was affixing a motion sensor to its trigger mechanism. The device was no bigger than a small tape recorder and was nothing more than a sophisticated version of the one used on home security alarms. The final fail-safe element of his plan: Abraham had left the power plant confident in the knowledge that it would blow at the very instant he detonated the explosives beneath the president’s car.

His outfit, typical of a high steelworker, had helped him gain access to one of the elevators when no one had been paying much attention. He crouched now on a horizontal steel support beam halfway to the front of the structure, in clear view of the road below. He found this setting to be slightly ironic in that he had a lot in common with the steel shell. After all, that was what his entire existence had been reduced to in the Amazon. All the covering conscience and sensibility had been stripped away. What remained had been hardened into tungsten and rendered impenetrable.

Abraham rose to his feet and pulled off his helmet. He had not brought binoculars along, but he could see the motorcade making its way through the downtown Boston streets well off in the distance. He fingered the detonator through the fabric of his pocket and counted the minutes before the time would come to use it.

Money might not be everything, Patty Hunsecker reckoned, but it sure helped. It was money that had allowed her to hire a private Learjet to fly her across the country to the Utah Salt Flats the previous night. She could only hope to arrive at the bunker ahead of Sal Belamo and his killers, yet knew that hope had nothing to do with it. Blaine McCracken had let her go, which meant he was giving her time. Why, she could not say. His code of honor was a constant enigma. She hated him for some parts of it, loved him for others. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for what he had to do, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t try to save her father first.

She rented a helicopter at the airport where she had landed and asked the pilot to fly her over the flats, where she hastily reconstructed the bunker’s location in her mind. She had trouble with her bearings, was almost ready to give up, in fact, when a narrow one-story building appeared out of nowhere.

“What the hell?…”

“This is where I get off,” she told the pilot.

There should have been security. They should have been met along the perimeter and warned off. Patty feared that Belamo and his men had gotten here ahead of her after all, but that seemed impossible. No, something else was to blame, and she could not possibly say what.

A hefty bonus convinced the pilot to wait for her, and Patty entered the building through its single unlocked door. The inside was lined with counters and shelves, an outpost abandoned to the elements, complete with layers of dust. It took her a few minutes before she found the false door in the wall that led into a closetlike cubicle. It was dark and she fumbled for a light switch; a fluorescent came on and illuminated a simple control panel, a single arrow pointing up and another down.

Patty pressed the down one.

Instantly the elevator began its whirling descent. With speed impossible to judge, she had no way of telling how deeply she was descending into the bowels of the earth. Several seconds passed before the compartment ground to a halt and the single door slid open.

Before her was a long corridor, the white floors indistinguishable from the walls and ceiling of the same shade. The sudden brightness stung her eyes and it took them a few seconds to adjust. She started down the rounded hall with the clip-clop of her boot heels the only sound.

Where was everyone?

Perhaps the Children of the Black Rain had abandoned the bunker when the scope of their failure became known. It seemed logical. Return to the surface and disappear until another day dawned down the road in the future. After nearly a half century of waiting, surely the makers of the plan could wait a little longer. Video surveillance cameras dotted the hallway at regularly spaced intervals, but she could not tell if they were on or not.

Her heart was starting to sink. If her father wasn’t here, she would never see him again. And, yet, if she did find him, she had no idea what she would say. He was still her father; whatever else he was made him no less than that. But she knew she wasn’t doing this for him. She was doing it for herself. She had to know, had to understand, wanted to prove Blaine and the others wrong.

An open doorway beckoned her, the first she had seen so far. Stepping through it brought her into a sprawling meeting hall. A huge conference table was centered on the floor. One of the walls was dominated by a map of the United States showing a dozen glowing red lights. And set before that wall was a darkened figure facing her. Although the figure’s face was cloaked in shadows and half-light, she could still see he was an Oriental. He sat there immobile and expressionless, as if waiting for her to approach.

Patty recalled Takahashi’s story of how he was the only overseer of the Children of the Black Rain to survive the onslaught of an unknown militant in their midst. It was this militant who had so drastically changed the rules, opting to expand Japanese revenge into the deadly nuclear scenario. And she knew that this must be that man. He regarded her with inexplicable indifference as she approached him.

“Where’s my father?” she demanded, fighting to sound strong and fearless. “Where’s Phillip Hunsecker?”

The Japanese just stared at her. Patty stopped, then came closer.

“I want to see my father. I want to—” Patty froze when she was close enough to see why the figure was so silent, so still.

The figure was an elaborate mannequin!

She had started to back dazedly away when a voice echoed through the hall’s gaping expanse.

“I’m here, Patty.”

And she turned to see a figure emerging from another section of the room into the light. The figure was her father.

“Eight minutes to critical stage.…”

Along the green, florescent-lighted corridor directly above the Pennsylvania Yankee reactor complex, the temperature was already in excess of a hundred degrees. Sweat poured from Jack Tunnel’s face as he helped Blaine fasten himself into the layered radiation suit.

“Gonna be close to a hundred and fifty at the bottom of the ladder — if you make it that far.”

“I’ll make it, all right.”

“Temperature’s rising a degree every five seconds — that’s gonna increase as we get closer to critical stage. Even in the suit you can take maybe three minutes down there. Probably less.”

“It’s all I’ll need.”

“The valves are clearly marked. I’ll stay up here and direct you to them.”

“That ring on your finger tells me you’ve got a family, Jack. Might be a better idea for you to hightail it out like everyone else.”

“And let you take all the credit for saving the greater Northeast? Not on your life, McCracken.”

Back near the hatch that led onto the ladder, two volunteers from the control room had finished stuffing towels and padding into another radiation suit. They were tying the rope under the filled-out suit’s arms when Blaine approached.

“Show time,” McCracken said as he eased the makeshift dummy through the opening. “You boys better stand back and cover your ears.”

And with that he began to lower the thing down, giving slack on the rope to match the pace of a man’s descent down the ladder. “Seven minutes to critical stage.…”

Just after the fifteenth rung, the firing began, the motion sensor having picked up the dummy’s descent. Bullets ripped through its suit and stuffed innards and clanged off pipes and ladder rungs, ricocheting off walls in all directions. The metallic echoing burned Blaine’s ears, and several times he flinched when bullets flew maddeningly close to the open hatch. Through it all, he continued to lower the dummy at a pace designed to draw continuous fire from the rifle Abraham had planted until its ammo was exhausted.

At last he heard a repetitive clicking sound that told him the firing pin was striking an empty chamber. McCracken let the dummy drop the rest of the way down the ladder and reached back for his helmet.

Jack Tunnel touched his arm. “With the coast clear, I can get the job done better than you, friend.”

“Coast might not be clear, Jack. Might be more surprises waiting for anyone who goes down there. It’s got to be me.”

“Sounds like a song.”

“Hopefully a happy one.”

Tunnel tightened Blaine’s helmet into its slot, but didn’t clamp the faceplate down. “Look, if she goes to critical stage the rest of us will still be able to get out with limited contamination. But you, friend, are gonna get zapped by enough rads to make your skin glow.”

“Get to save on my electric bills then, won’t I?” Blaine said, flipping his faceplate down before disappearing into the rancid heat of the loop below.

“Six minutes to critical stage.…”

To Johnny Wareagle, this all had a shade of familiarity cast over it, as if he’d already been through it before. Perhaps he had. In the many dreams the spirits had sent to prepare him for his Hanbelachia, a battle with the greatest enemy he had ever faced, they had shown him all.

Abraham could have chosen anywhere along the motorcade’s route to strike at the president, but Johnny knew the spirits would guide him in the right direction. Suddenly Wareagle gazed up at a nest of buildings squeezed claustrophobically against one another on Boylston Street, five blocks away from the Ritz Carlton. The entire city seemed to be choking on its own progress. The beginning structure of yet another skyscraper was piercing the sky where a parking lot had been just months before. Gazing that high up from ground level, there was nothing that could be seen clearly.

But Johnny didn’t have to see. He felt a sudden chill pass through him. The high steelworkers were clustered on Boylston Street, where everyone was waiting for the motorcade to pass by. The steel skeleton was deserted.

Not quite.

Johnny could feel the presence quite clearly now, could feel it as clearly as if it were a yard away. It was something cold and vile, with a manitou as dark as the night itself. The stink of its spiritless soul reached him, assailing his senses.

The motorcade was coming.

Johnny jumped the fence enclosing the structure and rushed to one of the scaffold construction elevators.

“Stray Seven to Alley Cat! I’ve lost him! Goddammit, I’ve lost him!”

“Not again!” Arnold Triesman shouted, rushing down Boylston Street toward Stray Seven’s last reported position. In the streets around him a number of agents were doing the same on his orders. A nag had suddenly hit Triesman’s gut about this one. He probably should have ordered the motorcade back to the airport; it was in his power. But everything he had been taught advised against panic, and, if this proved to be a false alarm, he’d be finished.

“Wait a minute!” Stray Seven’s voice echoed in his ear. “I think I just caught a glimpse of him!”

“What’s the twenty?”

“Near the Commonwealth Insurance Building.”

Right along the motorcade route, Triesman thought. But he couldn’t reroute without taking the president into an unsecured area. And a slowdown or outright stoppage would subject Top Guy to more danger than letting him go on. The situation, in any case, was under control. They had their man sighted.

“Did he enter any building, Seven?”

“No way to be sure, Alley Cat.”

“Get sure! Do you hear me? Get sure by the time I get over there!” Triesman switched his communicator to all bands.” All Stray teams, converge on the area of the Commonwealth Insurance Building shell. Choppers, do you copy that?”

“Roger,” the three pilots replied in virtual unison.

“All buildings considered compromised. Let’s move! Everyone move!”

“Dad?” Patty asked tentatively, tremors rising through her stomach and chest.

“I’m sorry,” Phillip Hunsecker said.

“You should be,” Patty blurted out.

“Not for what I’ve done. Sorry that you came here. You should leave.”

“Not unless you leave with me.”

He kept approaching, shaking his head. “I can’t do that.”

Patty’s eyes flicked about the room. “This is more important to you than your family, your life?”

“This is my family, my life. Always has been.”

The man who had come to a halt a yard from her did not look like her father. Oh, it was him all right, but she barely recognized him. Part of her had envisioned herself running into his arms; now those arms might as well have been a stranger’s. Patty shivered.

“I can get you out of this,” she made herself say. “McCracken will help me. He can fix things.”

“It’s too late for that, Patty.”

“It’s never too late.”

“This time it is. We’ve failed. Our identities are known. Our plan is known. For our honor to be preserved, we must disappear, become the past.”

“What are you saying?”

Patty heard a second set of steps behind her just before the voice reached her.

“She must leave, Pierce. She must leave now.”

Patty turned and watched as a second figure emerged from the shadows in the front of the room, stopping next to the Japanese mannequin. It was a woman’s figure, a woman she had known almost all her life and loved like a mother: Shimada!

McCracken felt the incredible heat building in the loop as soon as he began his descent. Even through his radiation suit, his skin seemed to be burning. Sweat ran from his forehead into his eyes, steam misting across his faceplate. He had spent his share of time in steam rooms, and that was the only comparison that came to mind — a steam room still pumping heat long after the cycle should have ended.

Blaine passed the fifteenth rung, his breathing labored. He had considered the possibility that Abraham had set up a second firing apparatus to thwart precisely the strategy he had employed. At this point, though, dying from a bullet seemed preferable to radiation poisoning or being boiled alive, both of which were equally real possibilities.

“Can you hear me, Blaine?” came the garbled voice of Jack Tunnel.

McCracken adjusted the communicator built into his helmet. “Loud. Not so clear.”

“Okay. If you look down, you’ll see you’re coming to the first catwalk. You don’t want that one or the next one. It’s the third one you’ve got to reach.”

“How much time?”

“Just over five minutes now.”

Blaine quickened his descent. The rungs of the ladder passed swiftly, his drop falling into a symphonic rhythm of hands and feet moving together. The second catwalk was gone before he knew it, then the third was upon him. He stepped off from the ladder and onto the catwalk.

“Okay, Jack. I’m on it.”

“You should be able to see the water gushing out…thirty yards down on the right.”

“Yup, there it is.”

“The valve you’ve got to close is above the pipe, say about eye level.”

McCracken started for it. He took each step on the thin catwalk cautiously, wondering if Abraham had left more surprises for anyone who managed to get this far. The water rushing out of the burst pipe was superheated now, boiling hot and getting hotter. Approaching it, Blaine realized his flesh seemed to be baking. He was breathing hard and the sweat continued pouring into his eyes from his brow. He felt light-headed and wanted desperately to have something to catch hold of, but nothing was available. He reached the blown valve, choosing his steps carefully to avoid the plume of steam he could already feel through his radiation suit.

“I’m at the valve, Jack,” he said when he was behind the steam’s flow. The valve was circular, six inches in diameter, colored in the same almond shade as the rest of the pipes and valves in this section.

“Reach up and turn it to the left, counterclockwise. Your gloves will insulate you from the heat briefly, but when your fingers start to burn, pull your hands off and let them cool.”

“Hey, this isn’t a pie we’re talking about here!”

“Just go to work. Four and a half minutes left now.”

Blaine ran his fingers cautiously around the circumference of the valve. Along its squat neck, he felt a small attachment no bigger than a matchbox. Abraham’s final precaution would have done the job just fine if the man who had come down here hadn’t known what to look and feel for. Blaine closed his fingers on the small but potent charge and pried it away.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, letting it drop harmlessly to the catwalk and returning his attention to the valve.

“My hands feel hot already, Jack,” he said an instant after his gloved fingers tightened around it. “God, this thing’s tight!”

“Is it moving? If it’s been jammed we’ll have to go to a backup.”

“I can get it…. There, it’s starting to go now….”

McCracken twisted with all his strength. Progress came slowly. Finally he detected a marked slowing in the water sprouting from the pipe. When at last the valve was turned tight against the other side, it slowed to a trickle.

“That’s it, Jack.”

“Halfway there, Blaine. All we gotta do now is reroute the cooling water by opening up a backup valve and bringing it back into the central core. You’ve got to go down to the next catwalk.”

“Four minutes to critical stage.…”

“That bitch has been known to be wrong before,” said Tunnel, venting his tension on the mechanical female voice that sounded through the core area.

“How many times?”

“Twice in simulations.”

“I’m back at the ladder, Jack, and going down.”

“Okay. The valve you’ve got to open is in the same spot as the other, just along the next catwalk. How you holding up?”

“Dizzy. I can’t catch my breath.”

“No wonder. The temperature down there just topped the hundred-and-fifty-degree mark.”

“And I’m not even getting a tan to show for it.”

Blaine reached the fourth sublevel catwalk; the piping was colored blue instead of white. He proceeded down it as quickly as he could through the intense heat and located the valve just where Tunnel said it would be.

“I’m here,” he said.

“Okay, Blaine. This one you want to turn to the right. You’ve got to open it all the way or there won’t be enough pressure to cool the reactor in time.”

“Just how much time is that?”

“Thirty seconds to a minute — or we go to the critical stage.”

“That means we’ve only got something over two left.”

“Turn the valve now and you’ll have time to spare.”

Blaine reached up for it, his hands burning with the intensity of fire. “It won’t give, Jack.”

“Ease off a little. No pressure inward. Just twist.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Blaine said, the strain of exertion telling in his voice. “It feels like somebody’s—”

He felt it all go at once and realized the valve had come off in his hand.

“Jack, I think I’ve got a problem down here….”

Chapter 36

Through his binoculars, Abraham could see the motorcade edging down Boylston Street. A pair of motorcycle cops, sirens screaming, led the way. There were three more squad cars both in front and in back of the president’s limo. The helicopters were hovering above the steel structure of the building where he was hidden, but they couldn’t possibly spot him. Two to three minutes more and the limo would have reached the stripe lined with his deadly explosives. Abraham felt no excitement, only anticipation.

He had started to reach into his pocket for the detonator when he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Something alerted his senses enough to make him swing. He never actually heard the elevator coming, but as soon as he turned he saw the steel coil sliding through the pulleys, unaccompanied by any engine sounds.

Someone was coming up!

Abraham only distantly registered that whoever it was had taken precautions so he wouldn’t be heard. He sprinted across the steel skeleton of the building, strides bringing him from one girder to another. He already knew who it was, did not have to see the big Indian he had glimpsed across rooftops in Philadelphia to know that their fated meeting was about to take place.

He reached the edge of the skeleton just as the exposed elevator had cleared the floor immediately beneath his. He gazed down and locked stares with the Indian once again. Still staring into the Indian’s eyes, Abraham grabbed hold of the cable pulley. The Indian was barely a floor from him when Abraham tore the steel cable from the left slot harnessing it, instantly sending the elevator platform careening downward.

Wareagle had stopped the elevator two floors down. The automated pulley system shut down, he had hoisted himself up the rest of the way manually to keep Abraham from hearing his approach. He had watched helplessly as the Wakinyan yanked the steel cable free of the pulley on the platform’s left side and lunged to grab hold of it at the last moment to keep from falling himself.

The move met his expectations. The results exceeded them.

The burden of the platform’s entire weight forced the attached right cable into a grinding downward slide, the momentum of which drove the loosened left cable straight upward. Johnny felt himself launched like a rocket and drew his legs inward. As soon as Abraham’s frame flashed before him, he kicked out, throwing himself forward through the air. The move carried him over the edge and head-on into Abraham.

Impact between the two giants was stunning. Equally stunning was the fact that both gave only slightly. Abraham grabbed hold of a support beam to steady himself; Wareagle lowered himself to a crouch to lock home his balance. Then he rose to the full breadth of his seven feet and squared off against his foe. Johnny knew a gun might have finished the job quicker, but a gun was not a weapon his ancestors knew; if they were to help him here today, he would have to fight on terms they would understand. Against Abraham, he’d choose his ancestors over a clip of shells any day.

The steel girders that created a checkerboard effect of open air fifty stories high severely limited mobility. They were on the same girder briefly; then Wareagle leaped to the adjacent one and faced Abraham on a diagonal. Abraham’s eyes darted sideways and he leapfrogged away from Johnny. At first it looked as if he were retreating, but then he stooped to pick up a six foot steel rod used to fasten the girders together.

He had barely grasped it when he was airborne again, this time skipping a girder entirely and landing on the one next to Wareagle’s, the rod already coming overhead. Wareagle dodged the blow and lashed out with a dangerous kick for Abraham’s left wrist. But the Wakinyan let go of the steel rod with his left hand, so Johnny’s foot struck only steel. Abraham took advantage of the moment by swinging the rod sideways, aiming for Johnny’s planted leg, but the big Indian jumped deftly into the air, the rod passing harmlessly beneath him.

Abraham kept the heavy steel’s momentum going in the same direction by rerouting its force into a baseball-like swing directed higher, for the ribs. Wareagle ducked under this blow and jumped backward, to the next girder, as yet another swing whistled for him. The Wakinyan came after him, but Johnny’s eyes had spotted a stray piece of chain generally used to fasten the girders together. He gambled and dipped to grasp it; the gamble paid off when he managed to bring the chain upward in time to deflect the blow.

Abraham went for a straight thrust with the steel rod next, reaching across the open space separating the girders. Johnny whipped the chain in a downward snapping motion and forced it aside. Abraham came around fast for another overhead blow, and this Wareagle blocked by stretching the upraised chain taut between his hands. The Wakinyan responded by switching his strike to an uppercut, but again Johnny was equal to the task. He used the chain to parry the thrust, then forced the steel rod downward. This latest strike left the right side of Abraham’s head exposed, and Johnny used the opening to lash his chain against the Wakinyan’s face.

The blow mashed Abraham’s flesh. He grunted in pain as blood spurted upward, some spraying into his right eye. He sensed the next blow coming in time to snap his steel rod upward, in a diagonal line in front of him. The chain clanged home, and Abraham used the higher end of the rod to jab at the Indian’s ribs. He felt a bone crack under the blow and brought the rod around for what should have been a killing strike to the head.

Instead, Johnny locked his hands on the steel bar that the Wakinyan controlled. Using it as a pivot point, he hurdled across the space between girders and joined Abraham on his. They grappled, each trying to shove the other over the edge with brute force, neither about to relinquish their hold on the rod. But Johnny still held on to the chain with two fingers, a fact that was clear to him, though not necessarily Abraham. The next time the Wakinyan thrust forward against the steel they jointly held, Johnny let him complete the move, ducking down and coming up behind him. Before Abraham could respond, Johnny had wrapped the chain around his throat from the rear. He pulled his hands across each other, fighting against the incredible strength of the Wakinyan’s neck muscles.

Abraham pummeled Johnny’s broken rib with a series of elbow blows. The Indian winced and bit his lip, but did not release his death grip. Abraham flailed desperately with the steel rod, his blows finding nothing. His eyes dipped downward and saw Johnny’s boot next to his shoe. With the last effort of strength he could manage, the Wakinyan slammed the rod down toward the boot, then let go of it.

Johnny howled in agony at the impact. His grip on the chain slackened enough for Abraham to pry his hands up between his flesh and the chain. He yanked powerfully and dipped his shoulder at the same time. Wareagle flew up and over him, coming down hard enough to shake the steel girder they shared. They both had hold of the chain now, and the Wakinyan leaned over to yank it from Johnny’s hand. Wareagle’s response was to launch a kick behind him that caught Abraham square in the chin. He reeled backward and slammed against a steel support beam.

Johnny turned around and tried to get up again. By the time he had started to rise, though, the steel rod was back in Abraham’s hands and whipping around. The blow caught Wareagle in the hip and buttocks and pitched him sideways off the girder. The force of the blow was potent enough to drive Johnny all the way to the next girder over; he managed to grab a desperate hold of the steel rim, saving himself from falling all the way down. Abraham leaped on the girder after him and began slamming the rod down in the direction of the Indian’s hands. Johnny jammed his fingers into a precariously small groove cut in the girder and began to shimmy across it.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

Abraham’s blows were preceded by wails now, as Johnny swayed back and forth fifty stories up. He had only one chance left. Abraham had dropped to his knees, one hand holding the girder for support while he used the other to lash Johnny with the steel rod. Wareagle let go with his right hand and relied only on his left to hold him there dangling, while his right slid into his belt and withdrew the hunting knife that had been passed down through his family for generations. It was bulky and poorly weighted compared to the Gerber MKII he was used to, but it had worked for his ancestors, and that was good enough for him. The palm Abraham was using to support himself was visible through a slight crack in the girder, and Johnny jammed the blade upward.

Abraham’s wail turned into a scream of utter agony as the blade cut all the way through his palm and hand and emerged coated with blood and gristle. The incredible force of the blow had actually wedged the sides of the knife into the steel of the girder. Abraham yanked his mutilated hand up off the blade with a cry that bubbled in Johnny’s ears and heaved himself backward.

Wareagle seized the moment to swing himself back up on the girder. When he regained it, ready to spring, Abraham, leaning uneasily against a support beam, grasped something black in his hand.

“You’ve failed,” the Wakinyan said calmly, the presidential motorcade moving ever closer to his mark. “You’ve failed.”

Johnny froze. He could see that Abraham was holding a detonator in his hand, and that if he lunged for him it would activate. The Wakinyan was smiling, his eyes on the approaching motorcade.

Johnny stood there helpless. What was the Wakinyan waiting for? Why wasn’t he pushing the button?

The motorcade snailed a little closer.

Of course! Johnny realized. Of course!

Suddenly, as if somehow reading the Indian’s thoughts, the president’s limousine took off. It shot forward, police cars suddenly rushing up alongside it.

“No!” Abraham screeched. “Nooooooooooo!”

And with Wareagle halfway into his lunge, the Wakinyan pressed the detonator’s button. “I’ve got them, Alley Cat!” one of the choppers had reported seconds before. “High steel building. Three floors from the top.”

“What do you mean them?” Triesman demanded.

“Two guys, big as houses. Looks like they’re fighting, Alley Cat.”

“What? Say that again.”

“I said they’re fighting.”

“Do you have a clear shot?”

The pilot checked again with his on-board marksman. “Negative, Alley Cat. We’ve got open air between us and the next office building if we miss.”

“I’ll take the responsibility.”

“This is Boston, sir. It’s my call.”

“Dammit!” Triesman yelled, and pressed the button linking him to all his men in the field. “This is an evac order. Let’s get Top Guy the hell out of here!”

Triesman was already into a sprint, heading toward the high steel shell the limo had been passing in front of, when the explosion came. The force of it staggered him; his ears filled with a terrible ringing. His vision never betrayed him, but all he could see was a gray-black cloud of rubble encompassing the entire street before him.

“Top Guy, come in! Top Guy, do you read me?”

When no response came, Triesman ran still faster.

“Okay,” Jack Tunnel said, “I’ve got one.”

“How much time have I got?”

“Under a minute before the core gets too hot for the cooling mechanism to touch it at all.” Blaine heard Tunnel take in a thick gush of air. “But if she goes critical, you’ll never get out in time, no matter what.”

“Last thing on my mind right now.”

What was first on McCracken’s mind was the pliers Jack Tunnel was dangling seventy feet above him in the open shaft. Because Abraham had taken steps to sabotage the second valve, the only chance he had now of rerouting the cooling water through the backup pipe was to open the line with pliers. Tough work under the best of conditions, and these were anything but. “Okay,” Blaine said when he reached the ladder directly beneath the open hatch. “Can you see me?”

“Just barely.”

“Well, I can’t see you at all. I’m gonna have to take my helmet off.”

“It’s approaching a hundred and seventy-five degrees on your level.”

“Call it a free face peel. Might take years off my life. When I give you the word, count to ten and then drop the pliers down. I catch them, we got a shot. I don’t, get the fuck outta here.” McCracken unhinged the locks on his helmet and made sure it was ready to come free. “Okay,” he told Tunnel. “Start counting.”

He had the helmet placed beneath him and was gazing upward by the count of four. The heat tore into his face and burned his eyeballs. He wanted so damn much to close his eyes, to stop the pain, but he didn’t. And then they started filling with tears, blurring his vision. Dammit! How was he going to catch the damn pliers?

Blaine risked a second and dabbed them with the sleeve of his radiation suit. When he looked up again, a silver blur was dropping toward him.

Too fast to catch, he had time to think. Too fast to catch….

McCracken managed to get his chest under the falling pliers, but it was a wasted motion. He caught them in his gloves with the dexterity of an all-pro receiver and stooped to retrieve his helmet. He jammed it gratefully over his head again, locking it down as he rushed back toward the bolt the valve had broken away from.

“You hear me, Jack?”

“Barely.”

“Nice toss. I’m back to the spot. What’s the time?”

“Forty seconds till we pass the point of no return. Another forty or so to get back up here. If she goes to critical stage, getting back up won’t matter.”

Blaine had trouble gripping the pliers through his gloves and pulled them off. The wet heat of the secondary loop complex burned into his hands, but his improved hold on the pliers made it worth it. The bolt began to turn.

“She’s moving, Jack.”

“Hurry!”

McCracken kept twisting. His eyes followed the bolt’s gradual clockwise turn through his faceplate. His fingers were on fire, total agony encompassing them. He could feel his flesh puckering, the top layer starting to blister. Still he worked the pliers as the last seconds ticked away, worked them until the bolt would turn no more.

“That’s it,” he told Jack Tunnel.

The pipe near him vibrated ever so slightly as the powerful jets of water found their way into it, charging through. McCracken shoved his gloves back on and rushed down the cat-walk toward the ladder. His hands were so swollen that he could barely squeeze them over his fingers.

“One minute to critical stage.…”

“What the fuck, Jack?”

“I told you, the process doesn’t work instantaneously. That water’s got plenty to cool. Just get your ass up here!”

McCracken reached the ladder and began to climb. The rungs themselves were boiling now. Bubbles of steam rose off them, and he could feel the intensity of the heat even through his gloves. It was like climbing out of a furnace, the conditions made all the worse by his already damaged fingers. They were raw now, and he had trouble closing them around the rungs to supply him the rapid lift he needed. The agony deepened by the instant, making it impossible to place himself beyond it.

“Come on, Blaine. You’ve got it!” Jack Tunnel said. “Get your ass the fuck up here!”

Blaine gazed up at the hatch through his faceplate and tried to smile. The additional two catwalks had been left behind, leaving him barely another fifteen rungs to scale. Unless the cooling water was too late to stop the core from melting down, he was going to make it.

And then the eighth rung from the top gave way under his grasp. McCracken wasn’t sure whether it had melted from its casing or simply snapped. Whatever the case, he felt himself falling, falling into a superheated hellhole from which there could be no return.

The explosion shook the steel structure. Johnny felt himself totter on the edge and grabbed for the nearest support beam for balance. Abraham was wavering badly, the girder becoming a tightrope for him. Wareagle seized the opportunity to lunge out sideways with both legs leading, holding fast to the beam as he did. The heavy blow connected with Abraham’s side and staggered him further. The Wakinyan twisted to grab Johnny’s legs, but Wareagle kicked out again and then locked Abraham’s neck in between the knees.

Abraham managed to tear free of the grasp, his momentum forcing him forward. Johnny kicked back at him in the same direction, and the blow caught the Wakinyan square in the head and pitched him over.

He headed straight for the huge hunting blade, which still protruded bloodily through the slat in the girder.

Abraham’s scream was awful as his midsection was impaled upon the knife. He spasmed and writhed there as Johnny leaped two girders over, closer to the street side and the hovering helicopter, to gaze downward.

A huge irregular crater lay where a large portion of the street had been just seconds before. Bodies lay everywhere, some moving, some not. Sirens wailed. Johnny’s eyes searched for and found the president’s limousine. Rubble had compressed much of its top and carved huge dents in as many places as not. It had escaped the major brunt of the blast, though, and Johnny could tell from the congestion of Secret Service agents around its perimeter that the president was safe inside.

Johnny might have let himself feel triumphant if the scent of blood hadn’t burned into his nostrils. It caused him to swing around even before he heard the wheezing sound Abraham made as he regained his feet on the nearby girder, his insides spilling out. The warning gave Wareagle the instant he needed to grasp the steel support rod that was now beneath him and swing it around, trying to knock the raging Wakinyan aside.

Abraham’s lunge had brought him too close to Johnny for the Indian to reach him with a sweeping blow, so he changed the motion to a savage jab. The collective force drove the heavy steel through the Wakinyan’s already gaping wound, shredding more flesh and bones before emerging through Abraham’s back. His wail became a gurgle. Johnny let go of the rod and shrank back from the bitter stink of blood and oozing innards.

Abraham dropped downward off the girder, the steel rod looking like a spike driven through his body. The rod caught on a pair of neighboring girders, halting his fall and driving the steel straight up against his sternum. His feet twitched and spasmed and Johnny watched death take him at last.

The Indian heard the approach of another elevator coming up from the building’s rear and took one last look at the glaze-eyed Abraham.

“We’re up!” announced the head of the Secret Service unit that poured tentatively onto the high steel girders.

“Shoot to kill!” ordered Arnold Triesman from his position next to the battered limousine, a deep ringing still cursing his ears.

“Nothing to shoot at,” the team leader replied after a pause.

“What?”

“I got one target already big-time dead and nothing else.”

“Say again?”

“No Indian, Alley Cat. He gave us the slip again.”

McCracken saw the rope at the beginning of his drop. By the time he could grasp it, he was already even with what remained of the shot-to-hell dummy that had preceded him down the shaft.

“Blaine!” he heard Tunnel yell through the communicator in his helmet.

McCracken felt his shoulders strain and pull from the sudden pressure. His neck snapped backward in whiplash effect. He slammed forward and struck the ladder with enough force to jiggle it and crack his faceplate. But he had managed to hold fast to the rope supporting the radiation suit that was leaking stuffing through the dozens of bullet holes pierced through it.

“Hold on, you son of a bitch!” Tunnel shouted.

“Get the fuck out of here!”

“Not until we pull you up. We fry, friend, we fry together.”

McCracken felt himself being hoisted upward, powerless now to help in the slightest. All he could do was keep squeezing the rope that had become his lifeline. The rungs of the ladder passed by him in slow, surreal fashion, in an almost dreamlike way. And a dream it might well have been, based on the words that reached him as he came within a grasp of the hatch:

“Critical stage warning is canceled. Critical stage warning is canceled.”

Patty gawked disbelievingly at Shimada, the loving Hunsecker house servant for twenty years. “You’re the leader! You’re the one Takahashi couldn’t identify!”

Shimada stared around her. “My legacy to inherit and now to lose, Hana-shan.”

“Don’t call me that. Don’t ever call me that.”

“It is what you still are, just as I am what I have always been.”

Patty gazed back briefly at the front of the conference room. “You spoke through that mannequin so no one would know it was you.”

“Traditionally, women are not highly regarded in our culture. Accordingly, the illusion was necessary.”

“Dad—”

“You’ve got to leave, Patty,” Phillip Hunsecker interrupted.

“Not without you.”

He shook his head serenely. “No.”

“The boys! Think of the boys!”

“I am.” He looked toward Shimada. “That’s why we’re letting you leave. You must go. Your friends are drawing closer.”

“They’re not my friends! I came alone! For you!”

“Would you have joined us, Patty? Is that what you came for?”

“I…don’t know.”

“Our vision was pure, direct. No one will ever understand.”

“You were going to destroy the country, murder millions!”

Shimada stepped forward. “The deaths would occur, yes, because fitting revenge could be achieved only by reducing America’s great cities to what Nagasaki and Hiroshima had been reduced to. But enough of America would have been left to serve as foundation for a new America, Hana-shan. Our America…Japan’s America. A new society would have been chartered, rebuilt, and controlled by us. A new and different order that would look to the Rising Sun for direction.”

“Madness!”

“Truth, Patty,” said her father. “We were placed here for a purpose, and now that purpose has failed. Our lives were dedicated to the secrecy of our existence. Without that secrecy we cannot live.”

“Stop it!”

Shimada drew close enough to touch her but didn’t. “The decisions are irreversible now. Our fate was chosen for us long ago. Leave now or you join us in it.”

“For the boys,” her father said. “You’re all they’ve got.”

“No!” Patty wailed. “There’s got to be another answer!”

Shimada and her father backed away, toward the mannequin. She made no motion to follow.

“Please,” she pleaded.

“Go, Patty,” her father said just before the shadows swallowed him. “This is your last chance.”

Patty turned and ran, heart thundering in her chest, eyes clouded with tears. She lost her bearings briefly, then recovered them, finding her way back to the elevator that had brought her down.

The elevator her father had left operational for her, she realized now.

Her tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks as the compartment hurtled upward. Her body felt heavy and used up. When the elevator stopped, she had to drag herself out into the shell of the cover building.

Outside, a rumbling in the ground underfoot shook her senses alert. She bolted into a run toward her waiting helicopter, realizing it had been joined by several others, all packed with armed men.

Patty spotted Sal Belamo standing twenty yards in front of his eager troops, rifle slung over his shoulder. As she ran into his arms, another rumble shook the ground. A blast followed, muffled by the blanket of covering earth. She turned back long enough to see the wooden shack crumble into the ground that had become a mass grave for the Children of the Black Rain.