The Vengeance of the Tau

Chapter 28

Melissa fought for sleep during the long journey through Friday night and into Saturday morning. It came in fits and starts, brief moments of repose inevitably broken by the need to switch to another mode of transportation. Both speed and security were taken into consideration by the woman who had gone from savior to escort.

The woman had said virtually nothing through the trip’s duration. Her few words were mechanical, instructions given and warnings handed down without benefit of explanation. That would come later, she assured, once they reached Israel and this place called Nineteen.

The last leg of the journey was made in the back of a truck that had picked them up at a small military airfield in Israel. Melissa had not thought that civilian air traffic was permitted to use such fields under any circumstances, which made her wonder exactly who it was she was being taken to see.

Rich in archaeological treasures, Israel was a country Melissa knew well. Not only had she accompanied her father on a number of digs here over the years, but part of her own schooling had been an internship with some of the team that had unearthed Jerusalem’s Christian relics.

Their truck’s rear flap had been tied down, yet her escort did not seem to mind Melissa peering out through what chinks she could fashion for herself. A half hour into the ride she knew exactly where they were:

The Golan Heights.

She could see numerous guard stations and missile batteries dotting the landscape as they made their way through. There was no sign announcing their arrival at the place called Nineteen. The truck simply rumbled through a guarded gate and into what Melissa recognized as a kibbutz. The truck came to a halt, and the back flap was thrown open. Her escort helped Melissa climb down.

The scene around her in the bright sunlight was much as she would have expected it to be in the late morning. People went about their chores, limited on this day, the Jewish Sabbath. Most others she saw were out strolling or lounging. Children ran and played in a nearby field. The scene spelled normalcy, except for one thing:

Melissa could not find a single man in the kibbutz’s population.

“She wants to see her immediately,” an armed, uniformed woman said to Melissa’s escort tersely. “I will take her.”

The armed woman grasped Melissa’s arm.

“Thank you,” Melissa called to the big woman who had saved her life back at the nursing home when they started off.

The woman didn’t so much as turn to acknowledge her, and her armed replacement led Melissa through the large expanse of the kibbutz in silence. Structurally it was comparable to any of the many others she had visited over the years. But she continued to be dumbstruck by the total lack of males other than among the children.

A clearing appeared, in which a small cabin stood by itself in the shade. Before it, beneath a vast leafed tree, an old woman in a wheelchair sat behind a wrought-iron table. She turned slightly as Melissa approached, but did not acknowledge her. Not far into the clearing, her armed escort stopped.

“Go on,” she instructed, after Melissa had also come to a halt.

Melissa moved toward the old woman slowly. The pounding of her heart had slowed, anxiety giving way to exasperation. She had been hoping, expecting, an audience with someone who could explain everything she did not understand about Ephesus, about her father’s death. Could it be this woman? Had she been the one responsible for having her life saved?

Melissa stopped just to the side of the wheelchair.

“Sit down,” the old woman instructed. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t stand up to greet you.”

Melissa sat in the chair opposite her and pulled it farther under the table. She noticed that a second chair rested against the table between hers and the old woman’s.

“Are we expecting someone else?” Melissa wondered.

“Yes, we are. Any minute now, I trust.” She leaned forward. “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

“Yes. Thirsty.”

“I have orange juice inside. Squeezed from our own oranges here.”

“Thank you.”

The old woman waved a hand back toward the small house. The wind blew, and patches of her scalp appeared when her hair parted. It settled so that the patches remained bare. Her skin was creased and wrinkled. Her legs were little more than withered sticks beneath her dress. Her hands trembled slightly on the sides of her wheelchair.

“Do you approve?” she asked. “Of this place, I mean.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do. You have a scholar’s eyes. You couldn’t possibly have missed the fact that our community is composed solely of women and children. War veterans or war widows. Women who are beaten and frustrated and want to withdraw. We let them withdraw here, where their lives can still be worth something, where they are never forced to prove anything to anyone, where they can rebuild themselves. Some leave after a time.” She looked down at her trembling, liver-spotted hands. “Some never leave.”

A young woman came with a tray containing a pitcher full of pulp-rich fresh-squeezed orange juice, a pair of tall glasses, and napkins. She left without saying a single word. Melissa poured herself a glass and then poured one for the old woman, which she placed within easy reach of her.

“You saved my life,” Melissa said after gulping some of the delicious juice.

The old woman nodded. “Yes, from Brandt. Wily devil he was. Doesn’t surprise me at all. We’ve been watching him for some time. We’ve been watching all those who bear any connection to the White Death.”

The now-empty glass nearly dropped from Melissa’s hand at the old woman’s mention of the deadly contents of the crates from Ephesus.

“You discovered it was missing,” she continued. “You discovered what I have feared would come to pass for forty-five years now, since we tried to bury it from the world forever.”

Melissa felt a chill slide up her spine, thinking back to the mummified remains of the three Jews inside the cavern. “My God, the first time the White Death was removed, you were part of it!”

The old woman did not bother to deny it. “So many years ago,” she said softly. “So much has changed since, and yet so little.” Her eyes sharpened, and she continued before Melissa could start up again. “I founded this place, you know. I founded it because I needed it for myself. I could never have children of my own.” A veil of sadness swept over her face. “The Nazis at Auschwitz took care of that. Auschwitz was where it all began for me. For others it started in different places, but the pain was always the same.”

“Who?” Melissa asked in exasperation. “What?”

“This is a tale I do not wish to tell twice. We must wait.”

“Wait for—”

“The wait is over,” the old woman said, casting her gaze beyond Melissa’s shoulder. “He is here.”

Melissa turned around, and the sight sent a joyous shock wave pounding against her. She couldn’t believe her eyes no matter how much she wanted to.

Blaine McCracken had stepped into the clearing.

As Blaine’s eyes met Melissa’s, he froze in his tracks. The next instant she was out of the chair, running his way. She leapt into his arms and hugged him with all her strength.

“The hotel, all the killings,” she muttered.

“I know,” he tried to soothe.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” She eased herself to arm’s length, still holding tight to him. “God, that sounds ridiculous.”

“Not to me.”

She dropped her arms away now. “The journal! I’ve got to tell you what I found in that journal!”

“The White Death …”

“You know,” she said, dumbfounded. “How could you know?”

“Same destination. Different route.”

And the last of that route had been traveled with the woman who had rescued him outside the old toymaker’s house. They had journeyed through the night — two planes, several cars, and even a bus — to reach here. The second plane had landed on a military airfield in Israel, and twenty minutes into the drive that followed he recognized the Golan Heights. The woman had told him the name of the kibbutz and nothing more when they approached it. Whatever else Blaine needed to know about Nineteen, he had learned from the flower-encased M-60 tank placed two hundred yards inside the gates. The symbolism was striking: where war had once reigned, a new life and world had bloomed over it.

“Come here, both of you,” the old woman called in as loud a voice as she could manage. “Since you are both present, the tale can be told.”

“She had me brought here,” Melissa explained.

“Me, too, it would seem. Saved my life, maybe.”

“No maybe in my case.”

They turned toward the old woman and, almost in unison, said, “Why?”

“Sit,” she told them after they had made their way back to the table. Then, as Blaine took the chair between her and Melissa, “You know what this place is?”

“That tank near the front makes things pretty clear in my mind.”

“It was one of the tanks used in the battle to take the Golan Heights. We had it restored, and then the children designed the monument it now has become. It was they who insisted that we leave it fully armed and functional. Every week when Friday brings the Sabbath, a different one of them starts it up at sundown. To make sure we remember …”

“And what do you remember about World War II, about a certain secret chamber in Ephesus, Turkey?”

The old woman looked at Blaine closely. “Plenty. And you need to hear it all. Everything.”

Melissa had retaken her seat. McCracken pulled his further away from the table so he could squeeze his legs beneath it.

“We have little time,” the old woman started. “Perhaps none at all.”

“Because of the White Death,” McCracken followed.

“Yes.”

“She was involved with the first shipment of crates that was removed from the chamber,” Melissa elaborated, eyeing the old woman.

“And now the time has come to finish something that should have been done with forty-five years ago. That task falls upon you.”

“Us,” McCracken echoed.

“I brought you here to aid you in this quest. To help you save the world from them.”

“From who?”

“The Tau.”

“We will begin the day they were born,” the old woman continued after introducing herself as Tovah. “A late winter day in 1942 at a Catholic boys’ school in France, a school where three Jewish boys were being sheltered from the Nazis.”

“Tessen,” Blaine muttered, speaking while his eyes shifted between Tovah and Melissa. “A Nazi who may have saved my life in the hotel. He was at the school that day, a member of the firing squad.”

The old woman flinched and shuddered. “Then you know what happened.”

“Three boys were shot, and then the priest.”

“The three Jewish boys.”

“Yes.”

“Edelstein, Sherman, and Grouche,” the old woman added as if she were calling the roll.

“How could you know?”

“Because my brother was one of them, except he didn’t die.”

“What?” Melissa raised.

“Another boy took his place. A friend he had made who had helped shelter him from the very beginning.” Tovah’s voice trailed off. “A friend who was dying of cancer. It was a pact they had made long before. The friend asked only that my brother take care of his family, make sure they were watched over when the cursed war was over. And my brother did as he was asked. To this day he continues to do just that.”

“Your brother’s still alive?”

Tovah nodded almost imperceptibly. “We found each other again after the war. I had survived Auschwitz. After the school was closed down, he became a youthful member of the French Resistance. The experience served him well in later years with the Haganah and the Irgun.”

“The founding of Israel …”

“He was one of its best soldiers. No one served this country better.” The old woman’s eyes filled with tears. Her lips trembled. “And he will serve it again, once he recovers.”

“Recovers?” asked Melissa.

“They tried to assassinate him three days ago. My brother is Arnold Rothstein.”

Chapter 29

“He helped build this place,” the old woman continued, as Blaine and Melissa exchanged shocked glances. “And he has helped maintain it, providing us with a brand-new irrigation system for our fields six months ago.”

“And what about fifty-one years ago?”

“If you know of that last day at the school, you must know of the priest’s final words.”

“A curse aimed at his killers, if not unleashed by holy powers, then by unholy ones.”

“My brother was standing in the back of the assembly. He could barely hear the words, but he never forgot them. When we found each other after the war, they were among the first things he told me. I looked in his eyes and knew he was not the boy, even the person I had known. He had become a killer.”

She looked at Blaine knowingly, and Blaine looked back, meeting her stare.

“He was a survivor,” McCracken added, “just like you.”

“And both of us burned for vengeance in our hearts. We were filled with a hate so vast, even the joy of finding each other again could not overcome it. My brother swore he could not rest until the men in that firing squad and their leader were brought to justice. We met others in those first months. All of them had similar stories to tell. They had been forced to watch their children killed, their wives raped — my God, just thinking of it now brings the old vile taste back.”

“It never goes away,” Blaine told her. “It’s too strong.”

“You understand.”

“I’ve been there, Tovah.”

“Which is why God brought you into this. While the plans of men are fraught with the random, His are not.”

“And what about the plans of the others you and your brother met up with after the war?”

“You draw ahead of me.”

“The direction’s clear.”

The old woman shrugged. Melissa poured her a fresh glass of orange juice and set it down where she could easily grasp it.

“The lives of so many had been ruined,” she continued. “How could they go on? How could any of us go on? Where could we find the strength? We were afraid to love, so we lived on hate. There would come a day, we promised ourselves, there would come a day …”

“When did it come, Tovah?”

“When a Jew who had survived by betraying his faith and accepting the Nazi cross reached one of our members. Guilt was eating him away, just as hate was doing likewise to us. He worked for Hitler’s board of science. He worked on the White Death.”

Melissa and Blaine looked at each other, then back at Tovah.

“He told us what it was, what it could do and had done. At Altaloon.” She glanced at Melissa. “He gave us a map that pointed the way to a secret underground chamber where it had been stored. The way in was clearly laid out. If you could have seen how jubilant we were! Imagine! We had the means to gain the vengeance we so desperately sought. My brother and I summoned the others to a meeting, just those who had seemed as driven and as fanatical as we were. There were twenty-nine in all, but after we had announced our plans the number dwindled to nineteen.”

“The name you gave to this kibbutz,” Melissa realized.

“The symbolism is important to me. Nineteen is one more than the Hebrew number representing luck. We took this as a good omen, prophetic even. Ours was a holy mission. We convinced ourselves that God had blessed our actions.”

Tovah pulled up her sleeve and held her wrist out. The numbers stitched into her arm at Auschwitz had shrunk together with the withering of her skin. Less clear, they remained just as chilling, just as meaningful.

“I carried a second tattoo in addition to this one, on my right shoulder, until I had it removed. There were nineteen of us and we took that as our symbol.” She stopped long enough to stretch her left hand across to where the tattoo had been. “The Tau … We all carried its mark on our flesh and its imprint on our souls. We divided ourselves into teams to begin the holy task before us. One team went to Ephesus to retrieve a supply of the White Death for us to begin our work. Another, led by my brother, went about tracking down potential targets. A third, led by me, began to recruit others, others like ourselves whose lives had been destroyed by the Nazis. Our selection process was discreet. Out of every hundred we considered, only five or six were actually chosen. An indoctrination process followed, along with training, of course. But we still needed a strategy, a plan of attack. The White Death gave us power, yet we had to make that power work for us.” She paused to catch her breath. “The priest’s last words were ingrained in all our hearts and minds by then. What if we stayed true to them? What if we made it seem that our work was the fulfillment of his curse?”

“Word would spread,” Blaine picked up. “The resettled Nazis you couldn’t get to, and you couldn’t get to them all, would have their lives turned upside down by fear. What lives you couldn’t take, then, you’d disrupt, perhaps irrevocably.”

“They would live forever in fear of potential violent death,” the old woman acknowledged. “They would live forever under the threat of some unworldly monster coming to call on them in the dead of night.”

“Which left behind the footprint of an unidentifiable creature that tore its victims to shreds.”

The glass of orange juice slipped from Tovah’s grasp. She managed to regain control of it before it smashed, but the pulpy contents splashed her. She seemed not to notice.

“How could you know that?” she demanded fitfully.

“Two sources actually. From that Nazi named Tessen who seemed desperately afraid that the monsters had come back to finish their job. And from someone I know back in the U.S. who’s investigating the Tau’s rebirth.”

“Someone like you?”

Blaine shrugged. “Pretty much, yeah,” he said, not sure of how to explain Johnny Wareagle to someone who had never seen the big Indian operate. “They made the mistake of killing a friend of his. He doesn’t take kindly to that.”

The old woman’s bony hands clenched into fists. “None of us do. My brother lies near death, because he dispatched a team to your country to ferret them out.”

“And this team?”

“Contact has been lost with it. I expected as much. I warned him to take this threat seriously. He wouldn’t listen.” Her voice trailed off. “Just as he didn’t want to listen all those years ago….”

“About what?”

Tovah’s face became almost pleading. “You’ve got to understand that ours was, in truth, a holy mission. We were doing something that God Himself would have approved of.”

“But something made you stop, didn’t it? When the Tau came here to fight the battle of the founding of Israel, they didn’t bring the White Death along.”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Thanks to you?”

She smiled slightly between trembling lips. “You are very perceptive, Mr. McCracken. Even my brother wouldn’t believe me at first, but the White Death brought with it too much power, the power of life and death itself. We started to believe ourselves invincible. We started to believe we were above the mission we were performing.” She took a deep breath. “Mistakes were made, terrible mistakes. Innocent people died senselessly, horribly. The White Death did not discriminate between good and evil, and eventually neither did we. We were driven. We were obsessed.”

“And eventually you went back to Ephesus and sealed the entrance to the storage chamber.”

She nodded. “Or so we thought. The original nineteen of us had miraculously survived through the entire duration of our mission. We drew marbles out of a box for the task of destroying the White Death and sealing the remnants in the tomb forever.”

Melissa and Blaine looked at each other. “The corpses!” she said before he had a chance to.

Tovah sighed. “When they never returned, we knew something had gone wrong.”

“Something big,” McCracken told her. “They were murdered.”

The old woman’s mouth dropped, the surprise on her face replaced quickly by resignation.

“There must have been a fourth person down there with them,” Blaine continued. “They got the entrance sealed all right, but the White Death was never destroyed.”

Tovah raked a withered hand across the iron tabletop. “I suppose I have always known it would come back. I always feared that someday someone else would revive what we had sought to hide from the world forever. I felt it. I read newspapers from all over the world every day, waiting, keeping my vigil.” She paused. “The items first began to appear not even a week ago. They had come back, bringing with them the same thirst for vengeance.

“The vengeance of the Tau,” Tovah said, almost too hushed to hear.

“You called your brother.”

“And implored him to take action. Now he lies near death, a victim of the very force he helped to create.”

“A victim of another member of the Tau, Tovah.”

“No,” she protested. “No! That can’t be. It just can’t!”

“Who else could have preserved your legacy for all these years? Who else could have known about the intricate details of your methods, the training procedures? Who else could have known the exact location of the chamber where the White Death could be found?” Blaine stopped and stared deeply into her eyes. “The fourth person who ventured down into that cavern and killed the other three, Tovah. That’s who’s responsible for reviving the vengeance of the Tau.”

The old woman’s face became eerily calm. “But they can be stopped. You can stop them.”

“How did you find me?” McCracken asked her.

“The manner was rather indirect.” Tovah eyed first Blaine, then Melissa. “The trails the two of you followed led to individuals we have been watching for some time. When my brother was nearly killed, I knew the time had come to intensify our surveillance. Women of Nineteen were dispatched to watch over our subjects. The woman at the toymaker’s alerted us of your presence. I ordered her to assist you, if it became necessary.”

“Lucky for me,” said Blaine.

“But why watch Gunthar Brandt?” raised Melissa. “He was simply a soldier at Altaloon. I found him through his journal. Why would you bother watching him?”

“Shouldn’t you be asking instead why he wanted to kill you? The answer to both questions is the same. Gunthar Brandt did not write that journal; he merely supplied the notebook that already bore his name to a young soldier.”

Melissa recalled that the name “Gunthar Brandt” and his hometown had been penned on the inside page of the journal. A name at the end she had assumed to be Brandt’s must have been that of the journal’s true author.

“Gunthar Brandt was the board of science’s representative at Altaloon to oversee the operation and report on it,” Tovah continued. “Until his purported stroke, he remained militantly active in the rising neo-Nazi movement within Germany today.”

“But why would he try to kill me?” Melissa raised.

“He must have thought you were getting close to the truth. When he had learned what you knew and who you had seen, killing you was the soundest strategy to keep himself safe.”

“From you?”

“Very perceptive, young lady. I would imagine that he initially feared that we had sent you. He spoke only after being satisfied there was no connection, at least not yet.”

“And in spite of all this you let Brandt and the toymaker live,” Blaine challenged.

“Because it was equally important for us to know who our true enemies were. I preferred to watch who might come for an audience with either one of them.”

“Quite a risk.”

“The stakes were worth the risk. I don’t have to tell you about the dangerous state the world lies in today.” The old woman’s stare grew distant. “In Germany, the marches and parades have begun again. The persecution of foreigners has begun again. Outlawed Nazi anthems are sung in public with the police standing passively by; sympathizing, even supporting the madness.” Her eyes sharpened again. “You see, the Tau is not the only thing that has returned. Imagine for a moment the White Death in the hands of a new generation of madmen!”

“Something that never could have happened if not for the return of one of the Tau’s original members to Ephesus to remove the rest of the crates containing it. We’ve got to track down the surviving members, Tovah. It’s the only way to—”

McCracken broke off speaking and stiffened, as a pair of armed women rushed into the area and headed straight for the table. One of them leaned over and whispered a message into the old woman’s ear. She nodded and sent the two of them on their way.

“It seems,” she told McCracken, “that we have company.”

Chapter 30

“Who?” Blaine asked, rising deliberately to his feet.

“Terrorists, or some pretending to be terrorists.”

“The Tau,” Melissa said, eyes meeting McCracken’s.

“Whoever they are, how’d they get through the IDF security lines?”

“Such things have been known to happen before,” Tovah explained. “There is no need to worry. We are prepared for this. Our early warning system makes use of its own security lines.”

McCracken was suddenly fidgety, agitated, like a Doberman straining at its leash. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to check that out for myself.”

“I have no problem with that, Mr. McCracken, so long as you take me with you.”

They came in a single wave attack from the west: eight gunmen dressed in camouflage gear with Arab headdresses and masks covering their faces. Judging by the figures they saw at the kibbutz, bent to their accustomed tasks, the gunmen’s presence had gone undetected. Once within range, they would kill everyone they came across en route to their primary target.

The men fanned out as planned and easily bypassed the trip wires in entering the grounds of the kibbutz. Each one headed toward his assigned sector. In the fields and within the kibbutz itself, the figures they had glimpsed continued to go about their business, unknowing, unseeing. Thirty seconds later, the leader gave the signal.

The men lunged into the open, their bullets slicing the air in constant fire. The victims who had the misfortune to be exposed took the brunt of the initial barrages, slammed again and again by bullets.

The leader screamed hoarsely as he opened fire on another victim from in close. At once his mouth dropped. The victim’s guts had been spilled into the air. There was no blood, though, just raggedy straw stuffing.

“What …”

“Take them!” a voice screamed in Hebrew.

The leader had barely had a chance to move before the bullets found him. He crumpled to the ground, just managing to press the single red button on his communicator.

“Take them!”

The order had been given just after McCracken had stowed Tovah’s wheelchair in a position that afforded a clear view of the kibbutz’s western side. He had begun to advance himself when the next wave of gunfire froze him.

“As I said,” Tovah reminded, “everything is under control.”

“Dummies,” Blaine realized.

“Inevitably effective against the overanxious attacker.”

“So it seems.”

With the signal given, the aimed commandos of Nineteen had appeared from dozens of concealed positions. Before the terrorists could respond, they were cut down in incessant hails of fire that spared nothing. Not a single one was left standing after mere seconds.

“A pity we didn’t have a chance to witness your skills,” Tovah called forward to McCracken.

Blaine had remained rigid, immobile. “When was the last time you faced an attack?”

“Two years ago. But why—”

The sound of revving engines stopped Tovah in midsentence. Her face crinkled with fear, mouth trembling and gaze swinging in search of the sound’s origin.

“Because I don’t believe in coincidence,” Blaine said.

Heavy-caliber automatic fire begin to ring out. Before them the armed women of Nineteen had begun rushing toward the front of the kibbutz. In the narrowing distance, Blaine could see eight six-wheeled, armored enemy jeeps storming the area, each heavily armed.

“Help me!” Tovah implored, starting to wheel herself forward over the uneven ground.

Melissa grasped the handles of her wheelchair to hold her in place. McCracken took up position directly in front of the old woman.

“I think you’d better sit this one out.”

“This is my home!”

“Then let me save it for you,” McCracken said. He had been studying the flower-encased tank at the entrance to the kibbutz and now turned to face Melissa. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

He shielded her with his body, as they drew closer to the center of the battle.

“What are we going to—”

“Just stay close to me! Move when I move!”

“For the tank?”

“For the tank.”

First glance when he came within view of the kibbutz’s open front showed the eight large jeeps tearing forward onto the grounds in spread fashion. Each boasted either a 50 caliber machine gun or a 7.62mm Vulcan minigun pedestaled in its rear hold. The machine gunners fired on the run, while the Vulcan-equipped vehicles needed to come to a halt or at least slow considerably before firing with reasonable accuracy.

A trio of the buildings closest to Nineteen’s entrance were torn apart by minigun bursts. Those scampering away from the cover the buildings had provided were traced by machine-gun fire and hopelessly pinned down. More of the kibbutz’s female commandos charged forward with rifles blasting, but they were no match for the enemy’s superior weaponry.

But who was the enemy? McCracken could accept a small team of terrorists sliding through the Israeli Defense Forces beyond, but eight heavily armed vehicles? It was unthinkable!

The vehicles streamed farther into Nineteen, crisscrossing each other as they fired. The unarmed residents of the kibbutz were fleeing toward the rear with the aged and children in tow. Vulcan fire blocked their path on several occasions and had many hugging the ground, the adults shielding the bodies of the youngsters.

Blaine and Melissa darted behind the cover provided by the huge dirt-encrusted structure of the tank.

“What do you need me for?” she asked him, heaving for breath.

“One person can’t operate a tank like this alone, never mind fire it.”

“Operate? Fire?”

“On the money, Melly.”

McCracken lunged atop the tank ahead of Melissa and yanked open the top. He beckoned her to follow and eased her down into the M-60’s innards ahead of him. His eyes began studying the interior layout of its cab, even as he was closing the hatch behind him.

“I haven’t had much experience with tanks,” Melly reminded.

“That’s okay; I have.”

In truth, he only had experience with the M-60A1 and A2, more complex generations of this version. But the control panel on this one was virtually identical — an easy transition, so long as his memory cooperated. Blaine flipped a switch, and the tank’s interior filled with a dull glow. The weapons rack was a full five feet behind him, a dozen shells accounted for in its slots. With the gunfire continuing to rage outside, he moved to the tank’s control console and pressed its starter button.

The engine grumbled, growled, then shook to life as it did every Sabbath evening. McCracken slid to his right toward the gun sight, then turned fast toward Melissa.

“Back against the wall, do you see that stack of shells?”

“Yes.”

“Bring me one.”

After a momentary twinge of fear that the shells might be dummies, he was reassured by the weight of the first one Melissa handed him. He chambered it and sighted forward again.

“Take the chair in front of the control console on my left,” Blaine instructed. “Red control arm there controls the turret. Take it in both hands and move it the way I tell you.”

Through his sights, Blaine could see that one of the vehicles bearing a minigun had come to a halt twenty degrees to the right.

“Move the control lever clockwise. Slowly, Melly, that’s it.”

The turret rotated with a rough grinding sound.

“Stop!” Blaine ordered when the Vulcan-wielding jeep was dead center in his crosshairs.

At the very last, he thought he could see the occupants of the vehicle turn his way.

Then he fired.

The old tank kicked backward slightly as the shell burst outward. Melissa was jostled out of her chair.

Come on, he urged. Come —

The first Vulcan-wielding jeep exploded in a shower of flames, metal fragmenting in all directions.

“We did it!” Melissa beamed.

The percussion of the blast forced an enemy vehicle equipped with a machine gun fifteen yards from the blown jeep to waver out of control and cross the path of another. As Blaine watched through his sights, they collided in a rolling cloud of twisted, shrieking metal that slammed finally into the remains of one of the blasted outbuildings. McCracken checked the area through the open view plate and found a second of the Vulcan-wielding jeeps bearing down on the M-60.

“Another shell!” he called to Melissa.

The tank shook from the impact of the minigun’s powerful 7.62mm ammo. Blaine steadied himself and sighted forward again, while Melissa pulled herself across the floor for a second shell. The jeep holding the Vulcan was already charging away.

“Hurry!”

An instant later, Melissa eased another shell into his hands and resumed her position in the pilot’s seat farther forward. McCracken slammed the shell home and returned to his sight.

“Counterclockwise, fifteen degrees,” he instructed. “Easy, easy … That’s got it!”

He aimed slightly ahead before firing. The shell thumped out behind the gun’s recoil. Blaine kept his eyes glued to the viewer and saw instantly that his aim this time looked slightly off. Fortunately, though, the jeep struck a ridge that slowed it enough for the shell to impact upon its rear. No flames this time, just a rolling carcass spilling its occupants into the air along the way.

Four down, Blaine thought, and four to go …

“Got him!” Melissa beamed.

“Still got plenty of company.”

The sight through the view plate confirmed his warning. The three remaining jeeps equipped with machine guns were speeding along toward the larger congestion of buildings and kibbutz residents. The final one with a Vulcan dragged a bit behind them.

“Change seats with me!” McCracken ordered Melissa, and shifted into the pilot’s chair, while she slid past him.

The moment he was seated, he began working the controls of the old warhorse to get it moving. The tank refused to cooperate at first, and it took several seconds of coaxing with the floor pedals as well before it lurched forward with a jolt. The top layer of plantings and ornaments were thrown off. A pile of dirt built up before the view plate, and Blaine jammed on the brake suddenly to force the debris aside.

A severe list to the right told him that only one of the tank’s treads was functioning properly, and McCracken compensated with the T-bar steering control as best he could. The gears screeched and whined in protest; the tank was a sleeping bear stirred from its hibernation ahead of the seasons. He figured he could fire without sacrificing significant pace or control, so long as Melly could take his place as driver.

“Watch what I do,” he told her. “Get ready to switch places again.”

The tank continued to shake the ornamental plantings off itself, as he shoved it on. Before him a determined charge by Nineteen’s commandos had neutralized one of the jeeps equipped with a machine gun. He searched the area for the final Vulcan-wielding vehicle and found it measuring off shots toward the kibbutz’s largest buildings, where most of the inhabitants were likely to have gathered.

“Okay,” he called to Melissa again. “Switch!”

They swapped seats without missing a beat, and Melissa took over the controls. Determined to succeed, she frowned in concentration and bit into her bottom lip with her front teeth, struggling to mimic McCracken’s moves. Her hands squeezed into the T-bar, but it took all her strength to keep it steady. Her arms began to throb, then shake. She bit her lip harder.

The jeep’s driver noticed the oncoming tank and shot forward before the gunner was ready. The man was nearly thrown from the jeep and was actually the first to notice the tank wavering out of control toward a small storage shed.

“Watch out!” Blaine screamed, raising the shell he had pulled from the rack to the loader.

Melissa tried with all her strength to force the T-bar to the left. It barely budged, and the tank began to list even more severely to the right. Nonetheless, Blaine had managed to work the turret control himself and then waited for the rushing jeep to enter his crosshairs. He fired on timing this time.

The tank’s rightward heave threw him off a bit, and impact came several yards in front of the target vehicle. The percussion of the blast, though, was enough to strip the driver’s control away, and the jeep slammed into a tree, its occupants left to Nineteen’s commandos.

“Uh-oh,” Blaine muttered.

The right side of the tank tore the side of the storage shed away, and McCracken managed to close his hands over Melissa’s on the T-bar before the rest of the structure perished as well. There were just two jeeps left now, both toting machine guns. The open view plate provided no sight of them, but the sounds of gunfire crackling in the wind gave him the bearing he needed.

“They’re behind a row of low buildings over there to our right.” Blaine gestured, replacing Melissa in the pilot’s seat. “Heading toward the fields.”

“Where the residents would have fled to …”

“Let’s get this thing turned around.”

The grinding of the tank’s engine almost drowned out his words, as McCracken worked the controls hard. It responded sluggishly. McCracken spun it to the left and demanded of it all the power it would give.

“Come on,” he urged. Then to Melissa, “Grab another shell!”

The tank jolted forward as the gears finally caught. The engine was screaming, and the smell of oil was thick in the air. Blaine didn’t ease back, the speedometer nearing thirty and the engine warning gauge well into the red. The only way to reach the fields and cut off the jeeps’ attack angle in time was straight ahead.

Through the buildings.

“Hold on to something.”

But Melissa chambered the shell she was toting first, just as she had watched McCracken do.

Blaine never hesitated. The old tank crashed through a small dormitorylike building, chewing up wood and plaster en route and rolling over the debris it created. The last of the building’s remains were still being spit from its treads when one of the jeeps passed fifty yards before it. The jeep’s machine gun hammered away at those kibbutz residents who had abandoned the precarious cover provided by buildings for a dangerous dash through the fields. McCracken looked to his right and saw Melissa’s eyes pressed against the targeting sight.

“Turret, twenty degrees right — I mean left!” she called to him.

There was no time for Blaine to argue, nor was there time for them to switch places. She realized it and so did he. He worked the controls as she had instructed.

“Got it!” she said, feeling for the firing button.

She pressed it. The shell thumped out.

“Yes,” Melissa said softly. “Yes!”

The explosion rocked them. Before him, Blaine could see that the jeep was gone, in its place flaming charred metal with no real shape, scraps of bloodied clothing lifting off it in the breeze. Then black, rank smoke filled the inside of the tank’s cabin.

“We’ve lost the main gun,” Blaine realized, swiping the smoke away from his eyes.

“Still one more jeep to go.”

“Where? Can you see—”

“There! A hundred feet dead ahead.” She looked his way. “Running away.”

McCracken smiled and pushed the tank’s engine till the smell of oil was added to the other noxious vapors already filling the cab.

The jeep’s driver saw the onrushing tank and turned quickly to the right. The suddenness of the move caught the jeep’s tires in the mud, and the tank gained the last bit of ground it needed. The jeep’s occupants managed to lunge free to be rounded up by Nineteen’s commandos, just before the tank rolled up its side and compressed it to half its former size. Tires blew out in blasts as loud as the shell explosions had been.

The tank sputtered and died. Black oil smoke belched into the cab, then followed McCracken upward as he threw open the hatch and helped Melissa out ahead of himself.

Arms over each other’s shoulders, they approached Tovah, whose wheelchair was being pushed through the soft dirt to meet them. Her face was deathly pale. She was still trembling.

“Such a concerted attack,” the old woman muttered. “Never before, I tell you, never before …” She stopped, then started again. “The Tau …”

“A safe assumption,” Blaine acknowledged.

The old woman’s eyes sharpened with realization. “They came for you! They must have!”

“No, Tovah,” Blaine said, with an icy stare fixed upon her.

“Then who — Me? No, it can’t be, I tell you. It can’t!”

“This operation didn’t come up overnight. It’s been planned for some time, days at the very least. They couldn’t have known I would be here.”

“Why?” the old woman posed desperately.

“Because you’re the only one who can identify all the members of the original Tau, and one of them is behind the return. Now we’ve got to find him.”

“How?”

“Get me to a phone.”

Chapter 31

“Welcome to my home, warrior,” the Old One said proudly, as morning rose over the place she called No Town. “No phone, no electricity, no running water. This place has been unchanged since I grew up here when people thought the Civil War could never happen. Got us some generators now and propane tanks. That’s about it.”

Wareagle nodded knowingly. The woods to which he had retreated for a dozen years were equally infused with solitude and a sense of timelessness. Once situated in such places, it was difficult to leave.

No Town stood close enough to the shores of the bayou for its sounds and smells to linger forever in the air. They had walked over land the last eight miles of the way after the waterway they were traveling on became too shallow for their boat. After abandoning it at around one A.M., they had found shelter in a nearby abandoned barn. Heydan had made beds out of straw for herself and the Old One. Johnny rejected her offer to make one up for him and maintained a vigil long into the night. Whether he slept or not, she could not say; come morning he was the same stoic, tireless figure he had been the night before.

Catching first glimpse of No Town two hours after dawn was like taking a giant step back in time. Homes and small farms dotted the town’s outer perimeter. Drying laundry flapped in the breeze on clotheslines strung up behind the houses. Even at this early hour, plenty of people were out doing chores. Johnny could see a number of larger farms occupying the outlying land and figured, as the Old One had suggested, that almost all of No Town’s food supply was grown right here.

The buildings in the town center itself were formed of unfinished wood and clapboard. The signs above the few businesses were hand-painted or, in a few instances, simply scrawled. There was a general store, an outdoor produce market, a bakery that was already pumping the scent of fresh bread into the air, and a combination restaurant-bar-roominghouse that didn’t bother hanging a No Vacancy sign. Johnny could find no trace of a post office, but a small sign drawn in scratchy letters did advertise BANK. A sign carved in wood with a star above and below it revealed the sheriff’s office.

People on bikes or in horse-drawn carriages gave him a long look when they passed. When they noticed the Old One, however, they stopped and seemed to bow their heads in reverence, not taking their eyes off her until they were out of sight. In several instances she greeted them by name before they’d had a chance to announce themselves. Most times she simply bid them good day.

“I haven’t been back here in a dozen years,” Wareagle heard her mutter to Heydan. “Too long to remember the feel of everyone’s aura.”

Wareagle slowed, and the two women drew up even with him. He was conscious now of the fact that the two or three dozen residents about them had come to a dead stop and were watching their every move.

“Folks here don’t see white people very often, warrior. They see even less of Indians. Nice place to grow up, let me tell you, though.” The Old One turned to Heydan Larroux. “Maybe show you the house where I was born later, introduce you to my mammy.”

Heydan’s eyes bulged at the suggestion.

“Well, I’ll be gawdamned …”

Johnny turned toward the voice’s origin and saw a rail-thin black man emerge from the sheriff’s office. He wore a badge pinned to his shirt but had no gun. He stepped down from the curb and headed their way.

“Tyrell Loon, that you?” the Old One called in his direction.

“It be,” the sheriff returned happily.

He reached the Old One and kissed her hand, paying Heydan and Johnny no heed at all.

“I missed you,” she told him.

“We all missed you.”

“There was a need for my services elsewhere.”

“You fixin’ to stay?”

The Old One looked at him as if she were considering the prospects for the first time. “I just might at that. Years be ready to cash me in, Tyrell Loon. Person got to end things where she started them.”

Loon’s eyes scorned her. “You been sayin’ that since ’fore I had hair on my privates.” He stole a quick gaze at Heydan and then a longer one at Johnny. “What brings you back here?”

The Old One fixed her sightless gaze on Wareagle. “The warrior here saved my life. I come back to repay my debt.”

Tyrell Loon stuck out his hand and Johnny took it. “In that case, you done come to the right place.”

“And this here,” the Old One continued, “is my lady.”

“So you the one,” Tyrell said, taking one of Heydan Larroux’s hands in both of his and squeezing tenderly. “Was your donations built us the new school,” he said, and pointed to a small building at the very edge of town. He turned his finger toward an old church diagonally across the street from it. “Helped us rebuild the church, too. Gonna get us our own permanent preacher, soon as we can build him a house.”

“I never took much to men of that kind,” the Old One said. “Never saw the need.”

“Always figured that’s why No Town never had one.” Tyrell Loon looked the three of them over again. “We best go inside my office ’fore the town stands totally still a lookin’.”

He took the Old One’s hand and guided her toward the building with two stars marked SHERIFF. She stepped up onto the curb ahead of him. Johnny and Heydan walked behind them. Loon swung the door open, and bells affixed to the other side jingled. He led the Old One inside and then held the door for Johnny and Heydan.

Inside the room were a simple pair of desks, a dust-coated filing cabinet, and twin jail cells that were both presently unoccupied. The beds inside the cells were freshly made. The floors shone. A trio of stuffed game birds sat respectively atop the front counter, Loon’s desk, and the filing cabinet.

“Let me grab some chairs for ya.”

He set two rickety wood ones in front of his desk and then looked back at Wareagle.

“Don’t think I got one that’d fit ya.”

“I’ll stand,” Johnny said.

Loon helped the Old One into one of the chairs and then slid back behind the desk to take his own. “Now, what is it I can do for ya?”

“You up to some tinkering, Tyrell?” she asked him.

“Not much ’round these parts to tinker with.”

“There is today.”

Johnny handed over the miniature pager to the sheriff.

“I was in the Signal Corps over in ’Nam,” he explained, inspecting it. “Army done give me a great technical education. Guess you could say I haven’t done much with it.”

“We need to know the contents of the last message, Tyrell Loon,” the Old One told him. “Can your tinkering bring it up for us?”

“Don’t know. It’s possible, if this thing has the kind of memory chip I think it does. Let’s take a gander.”

He used a small screwdriver to pry the back off, and then a pair of thin explorers to work through the pager’s insides.

“I love tinkering,” he said without looking up. “Just like I figured. Chip keeps the last message received stored until one comes in to replace it. Yup, here we go….”

With a few more seconds of manipulations with his tools, he turned the pager over and gazed at its miniature screen.

“There it is.”

He slid the pager toward Johnny, who leaned over the desk to study the message that was scrawled across two tiny lines:

It must have been a signal to come in, a recall. The team of killers in the bayou would have gone straight there upon completion of their mission. Johnny had his next destination.

“Not alone, warrior,” the Old One shot at him, seeming to read his thoughts. “You can’t beat them alone.” She turned toward Loon and continued before Wareagle had a chance to object. “My warrior here has got hisself a problem, Tyrell. Got an enemy been doing plenty of harm and plans to do lots more. Got to be stopped.”

“Uh-huh,” Loon acknowledged.

“Big in number the enemy be now, though. Too much for one man to best, even my warrior. You hear?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How many men can you round up, Tyrell?”

Johnny spoke before the sheriff had a chance to. “I can’t let you do that,” he said to the Old One.

“I don’t remember asking your permission,” she shot back at him.

“You know what we’re dealing with.”

“But you don’t know the kind of man lives down here.”

“She’s right,” Tyrell said. “I’m not the only man here who paid his dues elsewhere ’fore he come home. Some of the older men was in Korea. More of the younger ones been to the ’Nam. You was there.” A statement.

“Yes, I was.”

“I can always tell. Never could figure out how. Anyways, most of the men here knows what it be like to fight for your life. And not just abroad, neither. No way. Some been fighting all their lives till they came here.”

Johnny looked down at the Old One. “We can’t fight this with just experience.”

“How about with the best weapons money can buy?” Heydan Larroux suggested. “I’ve got plenty stockpiled for emergencies. I’d bet they’d impress even you,” she said to Wareagle.

“Where are they?”

“New Orleans. In storage.”

“How many men you figure we need?” Sheriff Tyrell Loon asked the Old One.

“Twenty-five.”

“Make it twenty-four. Sorry, forgot the Indian. Make that twenty-three.”

“Why?”

“Got my reasons.”

A boy who cleaned up around the jail building came by seconds later. Tyrell whispered something in his ear and sent him on his way.

“Hurry up now!” he called after the boy, as the bells jingled again. Then he looked back toward his guests. “Problem we got is some of the men I got in mind ain’t hardly ever left No Town since they got here and won’t take kindly to flying, even if we had us a plane. We gonna use them, we gotta make them feel at home, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure I want to use them at all,” Wareagle said.

“You can’t win this by yourself, warrior,” the Old One told him. “And you can’t afford to lose. Fact that this enemy is holing itself up at an air force base can only mean one thing.”

“Kansas is up north quite a ways,” Sheriff Loon followed somberly. “Quite a ways. Don’t know if the Blue Thunder can make it.”

“The blue what?” raised Heydan.

Loon had started to answer when a cluttering, clanking sound outside made him stop. A series of backfires like a machine-gun spray followed, and the sheriff’s face lit up with a smile.

“Here she comes now,” he said, and stood up.

Johnny and Heydan followed him to the door. The Old One stayed back in her chair.

“Yup,” Leon continued, “here she be.”

Johnny fixed his eyes on a twenty-four-passenger bus painted in what had once been a royal shade of blue. Much of it had worn down to the dull gray primer now, and there were rust patches and even gaps where the rust had eaten its way through the metal. The tires were different makes and sizes. The windshield was cracked, and plenty of the side windows were covered by boards. Rust had eaten away most of the wheel wells, as well as a hefty portion of the metal over the bus’s rear bumper. As Johnny looked on, the door jerked open with a grinding rasp that had once been an easy hiss. A toothless driver gazed down from behind the wheel and grinned with his gums.

Blue Thunder had arrived.

Blue Thunder sputtered and shook, but held fast to the road like it was afraid to let go. Hours before, while Sheriff Tyrell Loon had gathered up the men to pack it for the journey, the Old One had made the rounds of No Town with Heydan by her side to gather up a select group of women. Several looked as old as she was. Others were young enough to cart babies with them to the center of town. All of them brought beads and rattles and other implements Johnny knew were used to evoke blessings or curses depending on the manner in which they were used.

“Must be the water,” the Old One advised him. “See, I wasn’t the only one to be born in No Town with special powers. These women all born here, too, and they all got their special ways.”

Led by the Old One, the women surrounded Blue Thunder in a circle and went about their individual ceremonies. One threw stones against the old bus’s few still-whole windows. Another blew dirt down its rusted tailpipe. A third spit repeatedly on its engine, chanting between each expectoration. A few sang. Others took more accepted positions of prayer. The Old One oversaw it all, feeling her way amidst them without participating in the ritual directly.

Johnny watched from a distance. As the ritual drew to its close, he turned suddenly to his right. The Old One was standing right next to him.

“You will travel safe now, warrior. You will be delivered. And you will not fight alone. Another comes to join you.”

Wareagle’s lips quivered ever so slightly. “Blainey,” he muttered.

“I have not seen his name,” she told him. “But his pursuits now mirror yours.”

Johnny had spent part of the ride to New Orleans in the back of Blue Thunder wondering what Blaine McCracken had uncovered in Turkey that had led him to the Tau. He’d had plenty of time to study the rest of the men crowded in the old bus with him. Under the circumstances, Johnny found them to be most impressive. These were indeed men who had fought many fights in their time and would never shy from another. There was a monster of a man, called Bijou because he was as big as a movie house. There was a man who looked to be formed all of knobby bone called Pole, so thin he had to cut a new hole in his belt a foot from the last one in the row. There was a former military demolitions expert, called Smoke because he knew how to blow things up.

Some had fought for their lives just because they were black. Others had served in whatever branch of the service would have them. Married or single, young or old, their status mattered not at all. Each one had not hesitated in the slightest after being selected. For the Old One, apparently, their duty knew no bounds. And the fact that she had blessed them filled each with a certainty that they would be returning unharmed when all this was done.

Wareagle wished he could have shared their optimism.

The weapons would be waiting for them at a warehouse in New Orleans, and Tyrell Loon had already chosen a crew to do the loading. The street leading to the warehouse was narrow. Toothless Jim Jackson was forced to back up several times to manage the turn. Blue Thunder’s gears creaked and clunked but somehow held. There was a pay phone down the street, and Johnny stepped off to use it.

He called Sal Belamo’s private line. A series of clicks followed, indicating that the line was being rerouted. Johnny was ready to hang up as soon as the phone was answered if Belamo’s voice was not on the other end.

“That you again, McBalls?”

Johnny didn’t hang up.

“It’s me, Sal Belamo.”

“Hey, big fella! Your friend and mine’s been hoping you would check in. You’re not gonna believe this, but the two of you are chasing the same son-of-a-bitching thing.”

Silence.

“Hey, you surprised or what?”

“Nothing about this surprises me, Sal Belamo. Tell Blainey I’m on my way to an air force base in Kansas. Tell him what we both seek can be found on this base.”

Johnny’s gaze slid back to the shuddering shape of Blue Thunder. The last crates were being loaded. The old bus’s frame had dipped closer to the ground.

“Tell him he’d better meet me there.”

Chapter 32

“Livermore Air Force Base?” Blaine raised. He had been calling Sal Belamo every half hour or so since the end of the battle here at Nineteen to see if Wareagle had called in, knowing the big Indian was his only hope of finding where to take his search for the White Death next. Though Tovah had supplied him with the names of the rest of the original Tau, she didn’t know where they could be found or how to contact them. And at the speed things were progressing, there was no way he could rely on traditional intelligence methods to track them down.

“Straight from the big fella’s mouth, boss. Want me to call in the cavalry?”

“No, Sal. We’re keeping this private.”

“That a good idea, given what you’ve told me?”

“That’s the point. Any official types who help are gonna want to know what it is we uncovered. You can figure out the next step.”

“They’ll want it for themselves….”

“You’re learning, Sal. The White Death has to end here.”

“You mean in Kansas.”

“Yes.”

“Gonna need help from somebody, boss. And, you ask me, plenty of it.”

McCracken looked back at Tovah. “I’ll think of something.”

McCracken explained the specifics to her as soon as he was off the phone, and Tovah was all too happy to comply with his request. First, he let her choose the best commandos Nineteen had to offer to accompany him back to America for the final battle against the Tau; after the attack on the kibbutz, it wasn’t hard to find volunteers.

From there, the old woman called on her many contacts both inside and outside Israel to arrange the logistics of their journey. From Nineteen the small army would be driven to the same airstrip Melissa and McCracken had been flown into earlier in the day. A jet would be waiting with a flight plan filed for New York’s Kennedy Airport. To avoid scrutiny, it would fly under diplomatic markings.

“Thank you,” Melissa told Blaine when they were finally airborne. The jet was a twenty-four-seater, and all but two of the seats were taken. Weapons gathered from Nineteen’s stash had been stowed in the cramped baggage compartment.

“For what?”

“For not trying to tell me I couldn’t come along.”

“You’ve got it coming to you.” He eyed her warmly. “Your father died for what we uncovered, Melly. You deserve to be there for the finish. I never really considered otherwise.”

She turned to the window and then back at McCracken. “Do you ever get used to it?”

“Used to what?”

“Loss. Fear. Anxiety.”

“No. To all of the above.”

Melissa took his hand and they sat in silence.

Sal Belamo was waiting as planned at the diplomatic terminal at Kennedy Airport when the jet landed. McCracken climbed down out of the plane and met him on the tarmac.

“You bring the specs on Livermore, Sal?”

Belamo frowned. “You ask me, maybe you forgot who it was you were dealing with here. Mothballed SAC base located on the outskirts of a little town called Hanover. I got us a flight plan to an airport forty miles away in Hastings, Nebraska.” Sal was smirking now. “What’d you bring, boss?”

Blaine turned back toward the women of Nineteen who were stretching their legs on the tarmac.

“Oh,” Belamo said.

“So what’s eating you, boss?” he asked before Blaine could start back for the jet.

“It shows that much?”

“Does to me.”

“It’s just that things aren’t clear-cut this time, not black and white. It’s tough to argue with what the Tau is attempting. Every name comes off their list makes this a safer world to live in.” Blaine’s expression grew reflective. “I don’t know, it seems to me that what the Tau are doing — what their predecessors did forty-five years ago — isn’t much different from what I’ve been doing for the last decade or so.”

“Bad comparison.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. Maybe you’re forgetting ’bout the big fella’s cop friend or the fact that they went after the big fella himself. You never killed anyone who wasn’t in a position to do likewise to you. The Tau don’t fit your style in the slightest.”

“I’ve been trying to tell myself that. I keep thinking that the key to this is what happened all those years ago in that chamber Melissa and I uncovered. One of the original Tau’s been waiting a long time to make a comeback. He could have done it at any time, but he chose now. Why? Only thing I can figure is it took this long for the technology to become available to reproduce the White Death in the quantities he needed for multiple dispersals. Livermore Air Force Base must be his primary distribution point.”

“And you just solved your own problem, boss.”

“How?”

“This White Death shit, maybe it’d be okay in the Tau’s hands if we left things alone. Maybe. But somebody else gets their hands on it might have a different agenda. You told me yourself that’s why you wanted to keep our trip to Livermore in the family. So it ain’t really the Tau we’re after, it’s the White Death.”

The way Belamo put it made Blaine feel instantly lighter and more relaxed. “So let’s go find it.”

“Can you fix it?” Sheriff Tyrell Loon asked Toothless Jim Jackson, as Johnny Wareagle looked on.

“Engine block’s got a crack in it wider than the Liberty Bell’s and the fuel line looks like she’s been chewed by a gator,” Jackson replied. “I’ll fetch me my toolbox and give it my best shot.”

“How long?”

“Anywheres between an hour and never, Tyrell.”

The stink of something burning had Toothless Jim easing Blue Thunder over even before the first of the black smoke began to show itself from under the hood. Of course, the signs had been there two states back. Blue Thunder had covered the second half of its journey grudgingly, in fits and starts, each corner and road bringing a new adventure. By northern Texas the clanking and clamoring had given way to a constant rattle that the passengers from Tyrell Loon on back felt down to the pits of their stomachs. Through Oklahoma the old bus was drinking a quart of oil every hundred miles and belching black smoke from its tailpipe. And halfway into Kansas Blue Thunder’s shocks had given up, so every uneven patch of road sent the occupants lurching upward in their seats. Four of its tires were losing air as fast as the engine was bleeding oil. A bit farther north, the rear emergency exit had sprung permanently open, causing an ear-wrenching buzz that had the makeshift army covering their ears to stifle the noise. It wasn’t until Toothless Jim Jackson figured out the right wire to cut that they could relax again.

As he watched Toothless Jim emerge from Blue Thunder carrying his toolbox, Johnny Wareagle found himself still surprisingly calm. He knew no matter how bad things got for Blue Thunder that the old bus would get them to their destination. Mechanically it should never have made it out of No Town, much less Louisiana. But the ceremony the Old One had supervised was better than any tune-up or engine replacement. The magic of No Town passed like glue through Blue Thunder’s gas line and stuck tight to those parts of it that had long since lost their seals. In one of the towns they had stopped in, the mechanic feeding Blue Thunder oil had looked at its engine the way he would if his dead uncle drove up to the pump and said “Fill her up.”

Such stops had served as the only breaks in their constant journey through Saturday night and into Sunday morning. Toothless Jim stopped not far from Johnny and threw open his toolbox. Wareagle knew tools fairly well and engines a little better, well enough anyway to tell him that nothing in this box was even remotely related to repairing the kind of problem Blue Thunder had come down with.

Toothless Jim grabbed some duct tape and a small plastic container. He held these items in one hand, while he rummaged with the other through the box’s contents and finally came up with what he was looking for: a thin, dried-out paintbrush.

“Here we go,” he said, flashing his gums.

Wareagle watched as he moved to the cooling engine and wedged a hand in deep.

“Bigger than I thought,” he said, as he fingered the crack. “I best clean it first. Sheriff, bring me that bottle I got tucked under my seat.”

Loon came back seconds later with a bottle of homemade whiskey corked at the top and half-empty. Johnny hadn’t seen Toothless Jim take a single swig on the journey, but he was certain all the same that the bottle had been full when they’d left No Town. Toothless Jim poured a hefty portion on an old rag and felt for the crack again.

“That oughta do her,” he said, sliding his hand back out. “Time for some black magic now.”

In this case the “black magic” referred to a thick tarlike epoxy substance that Toothless Jim spooned out of the plastic container and smoothed out in one of his hands. The other hand pushed the brush down into the flattened lump and forced as much black magic on as the bristles would hold. Then his right hand disappeared back into the engine, toward the crack.

“Where are you?” Toothless Jim muttered, as he probed about. “Come out, come out wherever you are….”

He smiled again at Loon and Wareagle. They could see his forearm flexing, the crack being found, and the homemade epoxy filler being worked home.

“Be an hour, if I can seal the fuel line,” he said, grimacing from the exertion. “Never, if I can’t.”

Chapter 33

Pop Keller sat in the only bar Hanover, Kansas, had to offer, sipping club soda and doing the best he could to shell the peanuts before him. Not so long ago, his drink would have been considerably stronger than club soda, and the peanuts would have been long gone. But the increasing severity of his arthritis had sworn him off booze and made cracking shells an act that he could perform only with gaps in between to let the pain go away.

If this didn’t beat the fuck out of life …

After all he had been through, all he had survived, to be done in by something the doctors said was out of his control. It had gotten bad in a hurry and worse even faster. Shit-rotten timing, with his road show hitting peak season and attendance records shattered everywhere he had been. While Pop sipped club soda, his people were setting up for next weekend’s show in the five-hundred-acre remains of a leveled amusement park.

Not that Pop was one to shy away from work — far from it. It was just since the arthritis had gotten really bad, he wasn’t much good helping out anymore. And Pop had always been one to figure that if you couldn’t pull your weight, it was best to stay away. Besides, the setup had always been his favorite part of the gig, full of anticipation, trying to guess the crowd and sniffing the air to smell for the weather. Now all the setup did was serve as a reminder that his body had turned against him. Be better once Friday rolled along, though, with a three-day weekend gig expected to draw upwards of two hundred thousand people. Christ, during the last stretch of the Flying Devils in his former life he hadn’t seen that many people in a year. Hell, probably closer to two or three.

Still, there had been some grand times back then, with no arthritis to mar them. What the fuck good was money when it hurt like a bastard to count it? It just wasn’t fair, as plenty hadn’t been in his life, so far as Pop Keller was concerned.

His former life in the World War II air-show business had begun early, before the full-blown warbird craze caught on. He bought most of his fighters for the Flying Devils in the fifties and sixties at rock-bottom prices. Through the seventies, the Devils had been the best in the business. They had barnstormed the country with their Piper L-4s, T-6 Texas trainers, P-51 Mustangs, and P-40 Warhawks, just to name a few. Their specialty was mock air battles that flat-out thrilled their audiences. No jet-powered engines, no gymnastic circles in the air. Just plain old gutsy flying in reconditioned fighters.

The planes carried live ammunition in their front-mounted machine guns. The highlight of the exhibition had often been Pop himself putting on an amazing display of target practice from a thousand feet. He’d been able to shoot the horns off a bull, until his eyes went, that is, and that was long before his joints had gone south.

He should have gotten glasses, but the truth was they looked lousy under his leather flying goggles. A dozen years ago now he had been squinting to focus when his fighter had taken a sudden dip and scraped the wing of another. The collision had torn the wing off his buddy’s plane, and a moderate crowd of 1,200 had watched the man crash to his death in a nearby field.

That hadn’t been what ended Pop Keller’s former life, but it came close. He had escaped jail but not scandal. The insurance company had laid into him heavy, and there were so many lawsuits, he had figured he might as well move a cot into Superior Court. Then his best fliers, the young ones, had fled the Devils for the Confederate Air Force or the Valiant Air Command and had taken their planes with them, leaving him with a ragtag unit of both men and machines.

Pop had stuck it out as much for them as for himself, even when pranksters regularly changed the first “e” in his name to an “i” on the billboards, proclaiming him Pop “Killer.” In the end he had been down to thirty-seven fighters, and there had seldom been a day when more than twenty of them were able to take the air. Pop had hired mechanics to patch his fleet together with Scotch tape, Elmer’s glue, whatever it took.

Truth was, he’d been ready to pack it in even before that day his former life had ended eight years before when a stranger had walked into the Texas bar he’d been drinking in. Turned out the man was fighting a war to save the whole goddamn country. By enlisting the aid of Pop and the Flying Devils, who won a battle in the skies over Keysar Flats, the man had succeeded in saving the good ole U.S. of A. But the remainder of the Devils’ fleet was lost in the process. A grateful government wanted to make amends, but they couldn’t replace the only thing Pop cared about: his glorious warbirds. Think of something else, they told him.

Pop thought about it and told them he wanted to establish the nation’s first artillery show. He saw it all in his head, and the sight had him excited. Artillery pieces from past and present blowing the shit out of targets for ninety minutes. Call it something like the National Artillery Brigade. Yeah, the NAB. Government went for it. Set Pop up with the equipment for free and agreed to supply ammo on request.

His present life had begun.

Right now his truck was parked outside in the lot with the National Artillery Brigade’s smoke-and-barrel logo stenciled across both its sides.

And the people loved it. The NAB performed to packed crowds at every stop for its first four years, and things went off generally without a hitch. Then the war in the Gulf had given the nation new pride and a fresh fascination with the weapons of war. After seeing it on television, live seemed even better. Capacity crowds had become jam-packed ones. A few times Pop had turned away more folks for one performance than the Flying Devils had performed before in a month. Extra shows were added. Pop had to hire drivers just to keep him supplied with ammo. He figured he should take a trip to Iraq and buy Saddam Hussein a beer. Shake his hand right before he stuck a Patriot missile up his ass and fired.

Patriot missile …

The thought had given Pop an idea, and he’d called his friends in Washington one more time. Any chance he could add a Patriot missile battery to his show for just a little while? The answer had been no, and it had stayed no until quite recently, when the Patriot ran into some unwelcome publicity. The good PR certainly couldn’t hurt, and three months later the NAB had its Patriots — for a while, anyway.

The battery, complete with its own heavy security, had joined up with the NAB for this Kansas performance, assuring attendance records that might never be broken. Of course, the battery wasn’t really going to do anything except sit there on display, and patrons who wanted a view would only be able to get one from a hundred feet away. Pop was charging ten bucks a head, and that meant two million dollars for a weekend’s work, the NAB well on its way to becoming the hottest attraction in the country.

Move over, Ice Capades.

Give it up, Ringling Brothers.

Pop would have enjoyed it a lot more if his hands didn’t ache so much. A few drinks would briefly drown the pain, but he’d pay for it tomorrow, and tomorrow was getting too close to opening day. So he nursed his club soda and cracked peanuts as best he could to kill the time that it took for the NAB to set up shop. He had the bar to himself, except for a nervous-looking woman sitting in one of its three booths. She’d been staring into a cup of coffee that had long lost its steam, and Pop had looked toward her a few times to see if what she needed was a friend. He always looked away, though, before she had a chance to return his stare. Pop had gotten burned enough times helping out strangers; boy, had he ever. Nope, he was gonna sit this one out. Spend the rest of his downtime doing what he used to do best and remembering what it felt like.

“Give me another, Jimmy.”

But Pop Keller couldn’t resist staring the woman’s way, turning on his stool so he was facing in her direction. The bartender set the club soda down on the bar, and Pop reached back for it. He’d give himself as much time as it took to finish it and then, what the hell, he’d join the woman in her booth.

“Livermore Air Force Base,” Blaine said, and he handed the binoculars to Sal Belamo.

Sal pressed them against his eyes and spun the focusing wheels. From their position atop a hill, they had a clear vantage point of the base across a double-laned highway. They had taken off from Kennedy six hours earlier, half of that time spent getting here from the small airport in Hastings, Nebraska. This time Blaine had insisted that Melissa not accompany them. In spite of her determined protests, she was waiting things out in nearby Hanover, Kansas.

“They got the right uniforms, guns, jeeps, the whole works,” Sal Belamo was saying. “Shit, place doesn’t look like it was ever even closed down.”

“That way no questions are raised.” Blaine told him. “Military might have left a small transition staff in place, so people see a little added activity, it doesn’t stand out.”

Belamo swept the binoculars across the base’s length. “I count a dozen guards on the perimeter. ’Bout what I figured.”

Livermore Air Force Base was one of the first of nearly a hundred such bases to be closed down in the latest round of military cost cutting. In its heyday it had had upwards of 3,700 servicemen in its population and been home to a wing of B-52 SAC bombers. Blaine gazed down and imagined the roar of engines shaking nearby walls and spirits at all hours of the day and night. Neighbors must have learned to bolt down their china.

The living quarters, apartments, and small homes rimmed the fenced-in base’s perimeter. Centered between them were ten runways, at least that many hangars, a control tower, and a three-story building that served as the base’s headquarters. But what had commanded most of McCracken’s attention from the time they scaled the hill were the eight small transport planes laid out in neat rows across the edge of the tarmac.

“This what you were expecting?” Belamo asked him, as he lowered the binoculars.

“Pretty much. Some sort of massive distribution’s about to get under way, by the look of things. What Johnny latched on to with those killings was just the preliminaries.”

Belamo fingered his binoculars. “Wish we could find the big fella with these.”

“He’ll be here, Sal.”

“Yeah, but meanwhile …”

“Meanwhile, we get started without him.”

Blaine waved the first team of commandos into position. They worked their way forward toward the fence enclosing the entire base complex, making sure they were well out of line of the nearest guard’s vision. The weapons they had brought along had been part of Nineteen’s stockpile. Accordingly, the bulk of their inventory was composed of M-16s, Galil machine guns, Uzis, and sidearms, along with limited supplies of grenades and a small complement of Stinger missiles. The element of surprise was the best thing they had going for them, and if that broke down, the battle might be over in a hurry.

The women pulled themselves along through a stretch of high grass the last bit of the way. The grass covered not only their approach, but also their slicing through the chain-link fence that was rimmed with barbed wire. Livermore had been closed for nearly two years now, and the grass had been cut only sporadically since then.

“You read me, Sal?” Blaine said into his hand-held walkie-talkie.

“Loud and clear, boss,” Belamo returned from the opposite side of the base. “All team members in position and cutting through.”

“Almost showtime.”

“Rock and roll. Hey, McBalls.”

“I’m here, Sal.”

“I was born for this shit. When this is over, no way I go back to a desk.”

McCracken watched through his binoculars from a position of high cover across the highway, as the women of his team began to slither through the holes they had snipped in the fencing. There were eight in all, eight in Sal’s team as well. That left four with him to cover phase two of the plan.

Sufficient communications gear for all of the women had not been present in the Nineteen stockpile, so once inside the base they were on their own. Each had a patrol area. Each knew the rules. The kills had to be silent and quick. Once these were completed, they would take up positions around the airfield perimeter and wait for Blaine’s fiery signal to move in.

He swept his binoculars across the fence once more.

“My team’s in, Sal.”

“Boy,” Belamo’s voice returned, “these babes are good.”

“Nothing they haven’t done before.”

“Us either.”

McCracken pulled the van off the main road at the sign reading RESTRICTED AREA. OFFICIAL PERSONNEL ONLY. He drove down a narrow chopped-up roadbed where two guards waited at the base’s main gate. He stepped down out of the van, and the camera looped around his neck bobbed a little. Two of the female commandos, scantily dressed in the clothes of tourists in the midst of a long drive, fell in behind him.

“Hey,” he said, as he neared the gate, “we get a look inside?”

One of the guards shook his head. The other hung back, hand not far from his M-16.

“Sorry, sir,” the closer one said. “No visitors.”

“But they been letting people in ever since it closed up. I lived here ten years and never saw the inside. I’m just back for—”

“Sir,” the other guard said, coming forward now, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Come on. How ’bout a break?”

The guards were almost close enough to touch through the gate now.

“Sir, this is still a restricted area. You are trespassing on—”

The guard’s head snapped back before he could say another word, his eyes turning upward toward the crimson hole in his forehead. The second guard hadn’t even had time to register what had happened when a similar shot dropped him. A third bullet from the markswoman perched behind the van took out the video camera that hovered over the gate.

“Cutters!” Blaine called.

Instantly one of the women came forward and sliced through the latch that affixed the gate into place. The other two shoved it open just before a rented 4×4 pickup with covered cargo bay pulled down the road, driven by the final commando. The pickup came to a halt just outside the gate at the same time as the two largest women finished pulling the dead guards’ uniforms over their clothes. They moved quickly toward a jeep parked alongside the guardhouse and made sure that their helmets covered as much of their faces as possible.

The plan now was for the jeep, apparently driven by the gate guards, to lead the 4×4 onto the base. McCracken would ride in the pickup’s enclosed rear. The two other commandos would ride up front. The precision of all the women, especially considering there had been no opportunity for rehearsal, was incredible. He realized that these particular women, at least, had come to Nineteen not to forget, but merely to wait for the time when they were needed again.

In all, the time lapse between the downing of the gate guards and the point when McCracken climbed into the back of the pickup was barely thirty seconds. Excellent under any conditions.

“Go!” he called.

The driver of his pickup hit the horn lightly. The signal given, the woman in the driver’s seat of the jeep drove off toward the center of the base with the 4×4 right behind.

“Sal, you read me?”

“Loud and clear, boss.”

“I’m in.”

“No more signs of guards. I’m following now. These women are beautiful, ain’t they?”

“No question about it.”

“See ya in a few.”

“Showtime, Sal.”

The most important weapon in Blaine’s arsenal remained confusion. He had to hope that the fact that the jeep was leading the pickup in would assure him of getting close enough to the tarmac to accomplish what he had come for.

The two-vehicle procession cleared the last rows of residential buildings. The runways and official base structures came clearly into view now. The transport planes looked like big fat birds lined up to await feeding. Well, Blaine had just the meal for them. In the covered rear of the 4×4, he brought the first Stinger missile into his lap.

A number of armed guards patrolled the open area, many of them concentrated around the transports. Still more hung back by the hangars, and a half-dozen were posted in the area of the three-story building that had served as Livermore’s headquarters. McCracken could just make them out through the small window that looked into the 4×4’s cab. The firing of his first Stinger would serve as the signal for the rest of the commandos of Nineteen to move in. His primary objective was to prevent the White Death from being evacuated during the battle. Take out the transports, and the rest would fall into place accordingly. Blaine was readying the Stinger when he felt the 4×4’s brakes being applied.

“Company,” one of the women called back to him.

He gazed through the glass again and saw that the jeep with the women inside had stopped when another jeep being driven by three armed men approached it. The width of two runways still separated him from the transports, but that distance would be simple to cover for the Stingers. He knew what was coming next and readied for it.

The approaching jeep came to a halt and its passengers climbed out. The guards still had their guns shouldered when the women dressed in the uniforms of the dead men sprang outward. The pair of staccato bursts were brief but deadly. The three guards were dropped where they stood.

At that point, Blaine threw himself out through the truck’s rear with the first Stinger already at shoulder level. He sighted and pulled back on the trigger in the same motion, even as a hefty complement of the guards closer to the transports opened fire on the Israeli women.

The missile slammed into the first transport in the line just above its wing. The blast lifted the plane up onto its side and then toppled it over to be consumed by a flurry of flames.

Blaine’s ears rang from the Stinger’s percussion. Around him the four women had taken cover behind the nearest vehicles. Then, as he reached into the 4×4’s cab for another Stinger, he could make out the steady bursts of gunfire that began streaming into the main area from all directions at once.

Nineteen’s commandos were working their magic!

Bringing the second Stinger up to steady his aim, he could see a number of the enemy falling to the barrage of the sixteen additional members of his party. Still more of the Tau faithful, dressed as soldiers, lunged desperately for cover. McCracken fired his second Stinger.

He heard a heavy thump as the second missile shot outward. A second transport was turned into a corpse of flaming metal before his eyes. It slammed into another one, shredding it, and leaving Blaine with one less target to worry about in the process. He pulled a third Stinger from the 4×4, and this time the explosion blew his target straight into a nearby hangar, the front portion of which collapsed on impact. Numbers four and five were on target as well, but he had only one Stinger left to deal with both of the two remaining transports. No matter. With the women moving in to secure the strategic center of the base, blowing the final transport with traditional explosives would be a simple task.

As it turned out, his concern was needless. The transport that his final Stinger struck spun madly with the explosion, and its wing cut straight through the fuselage of the final plane. The fire’s fingers reached high and spread fast, as the loosed gas fueled them. Secondary explosions coughed huge shards of metal into the air.

Blaine charged into motion across the tarmac, holding an M-16 in place of a Stinger now. His priorities had changed. With the transports destroyed, his next objective was to find the leader of the Tau and, short of that, secure the reserves of the White Death. He was nearing the center of the battle when powerful automatic fire began raining down from the twin control towers at either end of the complex.

Vulcans! Blaine realized, recognizing the distinctive metallic clacking of a minigun.

The 7.62mm shells chewed up three of the commandos who were trapped in the open, and threatened to turn the tide of the battle all by themselves.

“Sal!” he screamed into his walkie-talkie, throwing himself into a dive.

“Ripe and ready, boss.”

He saw Belamo emerge from between a pair of hangars. Blaine realized he had never seen Sal in battle dress before, much less holding a belt-fed MK-19 grenade launcher. He pumped three rounds into the right-hand tower and snapped the remaining three into the left. The explosions, separated ever so briefly, tore the tops of the towers clean off and sent them to the ground in showers of rubble and debris.

McCracken rolled onto his stomach and fired a burst at an enemy stronghold in a second-floor window that the commandos of Nineteen hadn’t yet been able to penetrate. The angle required to hit the window meant firing in the open with no cover nearby, an easy target for the opposition. To minimize his chances of getting hit, Blaine spun into a roll before draining the rest of his first clip, as asphalt was coughed all around him by enemy bullets. He knew that Nineteen’s commandos would seize the opportunity his move had opened up for them, and true to form, they launched an all-out attack that caught the remainder of the base guards in a crossfire.

Some of the women fell back into positions of cover. Others advanced cautiously toward the headquarters, from which no return fire was coming any longer. Directly before him, Sal was poised against one of the hangars, slamming home another grenade belt into his MK-19. He bounced away from the hangar suddenly, as if jolted by a surge of electricity. He went for his walkie-talkie, but it was too late.

The hangar doors burst open behind the savage thrust of a pair of armored personnel carriers. The APCs rolled over the chewed metal in their path, the heavy-caliber machine guns mounted atop them firing incessantly. The commandos of Nineteen were caught totally by surprise. A flood of troops poured out from the hangar in the vehicles’ wake and opened fire on the fleeing women. Sal Belamo managed to knock out one of the steel killing machines with a fresh grenade from his MK-19 before a barrage slammed him against the hangar. He slumped down clutching his shoulder.

McCracken closed into the very center of the battle, hurling a pair of grenades into the oncoming troops. Bodies were tossed airborne in great plumes of smoke, which provided him limited cover to open up on the troops that were still emerging from that damned hangar.

He had fallen into a trap, goddammit! Somehow they had been expecting him!

Blaine tossed another grenade as he darted for cover behind a sturdily built maintenance shed. He snapped a fresh clip into his M-16 and gritted his teeth against the apparent certainty of defeat. What screams he heard now between the lessening gunfire were clearly those of the women of Nineteen being slaughtered.

“Alive!” a voice chimed through a loudspeaker somewhere. “I want him alive!”

McCracken spun out from the shed directly into the line of fire of two dozen guns, all leveled his way. Dead before him was one of the APCs, its centrally mounted machine gun angled for his head. The command over the loudspeaker fresh in their ears, none of the enemy fired. But Blaine had no doubt they would if he squeezed his own trigger. That was senseless. His only hope for success now was to play along with the owner of the voice that had spared his life, a man who could only be the member of the original Tau behind the group’s return.

Blaine tossed his M-16 away and eased his hands into the air. A dozen gunmen charged him and forced him against the asphalt, pinning his arms and legs. Cuffs were slapped on his wrists and, after a brief pause, irons strapped tight around his ankles. He managed to keep his eyes righted long enough to see a half-dozen of the female commandos, some wounded, being led off as prisoners. He noticed that the wounded Sal Belamo was nowhere to be seen before a heavy boot squashed against his skull and forced his eyes down. His view of what was happening to the rest of his team was cut off. All he could see were a pair of small feet encased in boots shuffling slowly forward. Flanking them were two pairs of far larger boots worn outside identical pairs of precisely creased khaki trousers.

“Let him up,” the voice he recognized from the loudspeaker said.

He was yanked to his feet, and the first thing he saw were the empty expressions on the twins that had barely missed killing him at the hotel in Izmir. Between them stood a much smaller, older man who faced Blaine from ten feet away.

“Shalom, Mr. McCracken,” said Arnold Rothstein.

Chapter 34

Johnny Wareagle watched the end of the battle from the same hill that Blaine McCracken and Sal Belamo had made their final plans on. The sight turned his stomach. His breathing stopped altogether when a figure he knew was Blaine’s emerged into the killing range of two dozen guns. He took a shallow breath when McCracken dropped his gun and surrendered.

The fact that McCracken was still alive was reason for hope. The Old One had told him that they would be finishing this battle together, and had hinted that they would win. Besides, now that Blue Thunder had gotten him here, the rest seemed simple by comparison. Toothless Jim Jackson’s toolbox had turned out to contain just enough magic to do the job. It took three additional stops along the route north, but somehow he kept the bus sputtering on its way, top speed reduced successively and the grinding of the engine reaching an ear-splitting pitch.

“Looks to me like we be in a heap of trouble,” Tyrell Loon said from Wareagle’s side on the top of the hill. Blue Thunder was parked not far from the bottom, its occupants waiting outside it in nervous expectation. “We goin’ in against that?”

It took a while before Johnny responded. “Not we, Sheriff.”

“We got us a job to do, ’case you’re forgettin’.”

“Not anymore.”

“What chance you figure you got alone?”

Johnny didn’t say a word.

“Well, whatever it is, it be a hell of a lot better with us along. You can’t argue with that.”

Wareagle nodded reluctantly. “We’ll need more firepower than what we have with us.”

“Find it in town, you think?”

Maybe, Johnny reflected, in the unlikely event that the stores in downtown Hanover contained the kinds of supplies he required to add substantially to their firepower.

“You forgettin’ we’re still blessed,” Sheriff Loon reminded when Johnny remained silent. “Old One ain’t here, but she blessed me ’fore I left. Made me a kind of luck charm for ya. I got to stay around, got to stay close for her magic to work, she say. We go into town, we find what we need. You can rest assured of that.”

“Then we must go,” Johnny said. He had moved past the sheriff when something on the ground grabbed his attention again.

“What’s wrong?” Loon asked him.

Johnny seemed not to hear him. His eyes traced a path up the last bit of the hill to the position they had been occupying until seconds ago.

“Someone else was up here,” Wareagle said finally.

“Your friend, probably.”

“Besides him, I mean. Here between Blainey and us. Left in another direction just before we arrived. Left in the midst of the battle after he had seen what he needed to.”

“Who?”

Wareagle’s response was to brush past Sheriff Loon and pick up his pace down the hill.

“You don’t seem surprised to see me,” Rothstein said after McCracken had been hoisted to his feet. His leg irons clanged together.

“I’m not. Not totally, anyway.”

Rothstein nodded knowingly. “Ah, my ill-fated attack on the kibbutz, no doubt.”

“Seemed a difficult trick, slipping forty men and eight armed vehicles by the IDF lines. Takes a man who knows the territory — and the weaknesses of its security. You were trying to kill your sister.”

Rothstein didn’t bother denying it. “Besides you and that troublesome Indian friend of yours, she’s the only one left who can hurt me.” He eyed the Twins. “Bring him,” he ordered.

The Twins moved to either side of McCracken and beckoned him forward with their eyes, while a hefty complement of guards kept a safe distance. Blaine walked toward the entrance to the base headquarters between the Twins. The deterrent they presented would have been enough, even if his hands hadn’t been cuffed.

“Ah, Tovah,” Arnold Rothstein said softly, from just behind Blaine now. “So brave and persistent, and yet such an annoyance to my work. I should have killed her years ago, of course, but what kind of man would that make me?”

“Not much worse than the kind of man you are now.”

“You have hard feelings because you have been defeated. But you were up against powers you couldn’t possibly comprehend. You never had a chance.”

McCracken’s mind flashed back to what he had seen in the secret chamber and had learned later from Tovah. “You killed the other three members of the original Tau in the cavern. You stopped them from destroying the White Death.”

“Because even then I saw how much it would be needed another time. Now.”

“What exactly are you planning to do?”

“Join me inside, Mr. McCracken, and I’ll share the future with you.”

“Might be a whole lot better, if you went ahead and told me what was troublin’ you.”

Melissa looked at the old, leathery-faced man who had slid into her booth without invitation. She mustered up a slight smile for him, more ironic than anything else.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“You’d be surprised.” Pop slid a little closer. “You know, we don’t get too many talk like that in these parts. You a Brit?”

“Yes.”

“Then just what is it that brings you here?”

Before Melissa could respond, the door to the bar creaked open, and Pop swung around to see an Indian whose head barely cleared the doorway when he entered. He might have been a giant of a man, but he walked like a jungle cat.

“Is that your truck outside?” the Indian asked him.

Pop gave him a Who, me? look and then shrugged. “You hit it or something?”

“Something,” the Indian said.

“Huh?” from Pop, as confused as he was relieved.

“I need your help.”

Pop slid out of the booth and gazed up into the big Indian’s eyes. He’d only seen that look once before, but he remembered it well.

“You’re shittin’ me, right? This is some kind of joke.”

“No joke,” the Indian told him.

“Not again,” Pop followed. He almost laughed because it was the only thing he could think to do. “Not fucking again….”

Then he realized that the nervous woman had stood up and was staring hard at the big Indian as well.

“Johnny … Wareagle,” he heard her mutter and watched the Indian’s back tense as he turned his gaze upon her.

“Blainey,” the Indian said in what had seemed to have started as a question.

“I know where he is,” the woman followed.

“So do I.”

“Jesus Christ,” Pop said. “Jesus H. fucking Christ….”

Billy Griggs had seen the Indian enter the bar. Man, was he big! Didn’t even have to look twice to make that fucker.

Wouldn’t have been so bad if there wasn’t a truck outside marked NAB. Must have belonged to some big cheese who had something to do with the artillery show he’d seen being set up in the remnants of an amusement park, as he cruised the nearby area in search of his quarry. After the hit team had failed to return from the bayou, the old guy seemed pretty certain that the Indian would be arriving in the area before too very long. Billy’s assignment was to watch for him and report in. That was it. Don’t even think of approaching. Guy was so big and, well, scary, that Billy was glad for the order.

What he’d do now was wait and see what happened when the injun came outside. Anything other than alone just wouldn’t do. So when he emerged between an old man for whom walking was a chore, and a woman Billy recognized as the one McCracken had been with back in Turkey, he knew what he had to do next.

“Help Mr. McCracken to a seat on the couch,” Arnold Rothstein ordered the Twins.

The Twins each grasped an arm and led Blaine toward the rear of the office that Rothstein had appropriated. Not surprisingly, they carried no weapons, nothing McCracken could make use of, on the chance that he got lucky and managed to overpower them. Fat chance. He had witnessed the Twins’ work in Germany. Two minds that thought and acted as one; conceivable to eliminate one all by himself, impossible to take out both.

“You faked your own attempted assassination,” Blaine said to Rothstein, still standing between his captors.

“With the help of the Twins here, it went exceptionally well.”

“You used a stand-in.”

Rothstein shrugged. “Regrettably, of course, my death will be announced in just a day or so. Or should I say his death.”

“Effectively closing the book on the man you really are.”

“No.” The old man shot out a finger to punctuate his words. “I have hidden the man I really am for a generation: the man who was born that day in a schoolyard when a classmate took his place before the firing squad. I learned to hate that day. I learned how powerful a motivator it can be.”

“And you haven’t stopped hating since,” Blaine said sharply. He was pushed into the sofa by the Twins, both pairs of eyes staring fixedly at him.

Rothstein shrugged in concession. “I suppose you are correct, but I had no choice. I couldn’t let the Tau die, because we were meant to serve as the world’s policemen, and that is what we will do. The White Death gives us the means to stop evil, to stamp it out before it has a chance to spread its venom.”

“How?”

“You must understand the background first. My sister was conservative. She and the others did not wish to acknowledge the awesome power the White Death gave us. They refused to even consider using it during the early years of our struggle to found the state of Israel, if you can imagine that.”

“Yes,” Blaine told him, “I can.”

The old man looked disappointed. “I had expected more from you. Right from the time I learned of your involvement, I thought if I could explain it to you, reason it out …”

“What kind of man do you think I am?”

“One who pursues justice, just as I do.”

“Not as you do.”

Rothstein smiled condescendingly. “All I have read and heard about you indicates otherwise. What we did to the Nazis in the years following the war was not enough. Nothing could have been enough.”

“On that much, we agree.”

“Then you’re saying vengeance on the Nazis who had escaped war-crimes trials was justified?”

“Yes,” Blaine responded without hesitation.

“And you see a difference between that and what we have risen again to destroy today?”

“I’m not sure what exactly that is.”

Arnold Rothstein’s breathing had picked up. His eyes glistened with determination and resolve.

“We struck fear into the hearts of the Nazis we did not kill, Mr. McCracken. Those that eluded us knew we would always be out there, waiting, watching. But why stop at the Nazis? There were other battles to be fought, other enemies to put down; there always would be.”

“Obviously your sister and other original members of the Tau did not share your feelings,” Blaine said, feeling the eyes of the Twins locked upon him.

“What choice did I have? I took matters into my own hands. There were enough who felt as I did to begin building the kind of army we needed: a Tau presence in every nation watching, waiting. Ready to be mobilized when the time was right.”

“The killings …”

“Here in the United States and all over the world, justice is being served. The slime is being swept away, dead skin of the world peeled back. As a prelude.”

“For what?”

“The world has seen enough ugliness. The time has come to vanquish it.”

Slowly McCracken realized what Rothstein was intimating. “Large quantities of the White Death distributed all over the world to be released as you deem fit.”

“Not just me, the entire Tau. The time was right.”

“Only because you had finally figured out a way to duplicate the original formula,” Blaine advanced. “But you still went back into the chamber to remove the remainder of the crates. Why?”

“Because the process required to produce the White Death remains painfully slow. To accomplish all that we must, we needed the considerable reserves stored in Ephesus as well.”

“And what exactly is that, Mr. Rothstein.”

“Can’t you figure it out?” Rothstein raised, half challenging, half scorning Blaine. “In centers of the world where crime festers, where evil rears itself on hate, in the breeding grounds for violence that will destroy innocent lives without compunction, the White Death will be released. Look at me, Mr. McCracken, and tell me you don’t approve. Tell me you would not take these very same steps if given the opportunity.”

“Not if it means destroying the lives of others who are just as innocent as those you’re trying to protect.”

“A regrettable, but necessary, sacrifice. Our point will be made before too very long. Just as the original Tau made the Nazis cower and withdraw, our legacy will do the same to the evil that has followed in their wake.” Rothstein shook his head in disappointment. “I thought of all people, you who have seen so much senseless death and suffering would understand. You who have seen the world come to the brink of destruction on so many occasions only to be pulled back by your hand at the last instant. The Tau can at last control these madmen who seek to rule others. That is where I differ from the others you have faced. I do not seek control or power. My work justifies itself, a means and an end. Tell me it isn’t tempting. Tell me it doesn’t appeal to you.”

“I won’t lie to you, Mr. Rothstein. I’ve lain awake plenty of nights trying to come up with the kind of plan you’re putting into operation. I think of terrorists who kill schoolchildren and madmen who terrorize entire nations….”

“Yes! Yes!”

“But I always come up short of committing to something like the Tau because of what pursuing this kind of vengeance ultimately boils down to: to destroy your enemy, you must become as he is. The disregard for innocent life, the willingness to accept sacrifices, putting your dogma above everything else — all those things are part and parcel of what you’re suggesting. Your sister was right: the power the White Death brings with it is terrifying. It allows you to define standards of existence. Sure, it all sounds good now, but what happens when you’ve wiped out all those you consider evil? You’ll have to come up with new standards to justify your own existence, and others will have to pay. Others will always have to pay.”

Rothstein looked at him for what seemed like a very long time. “You disappoint me, Mr. McCracken. I have heard of your work on behalf of Israel in 1973. I felt that I, that Israel, has always owed you something for that, so I ordered your life to be spared today.”

McCracken looked up from the couch. The Twins tensed slightly and followed his line of vision. He could never hope to overcome both of them, even if he could improvise some sort of weapon without them realizing.

“Can’t you see the world needs what we bring to it?” Arnold Rothstein challenged. “Can’t you see it is begging for it?”

“What I see,” Blaine replied, “is someone who has become what he set out to destroy forty-five years ago. Deciding who’s fit to live or die.”

“We’re merely trying to rid the world of those determined to make that very same decision without any regard for conscience.”

“Listen to yourself, Rothstein. My God, in seeking vengeance the Tau is becoming the Nazis all over again.”

The old man’s eyes flared with anger. “How could you suggest such a thing? How could you say such a thing?”

“To show you what you sound like to me. This isn’t the first time I’ve had a discussion like this, and the thing all of them have in common is that the speaker is always convinced he’s right. That he alone can chart the proper course for human existence. Sorry. You can’t save the world; it has to do that all by itself.”

The door opened suddenly and Billy Griggs strode inside.

“You want me to what?”

Johnny’s request made Pop Keller jam down on the brake. They were squeezed into the cab of his truck, still three miles from the former amusement-park grounds where the NAB was setting up for their coming series of performances. Blue Thunder fought to keep up the pace behind them.

Johnny had explained about the Tau and the White Death as best he could in rapid fashion, ending his tale with what he had seen at Livermore Air Force Base prior to finding Pop in town.

“I want you to bomb the base,” Wareagle said again. “I can give you the coordinates.”

“Hold on a sec. You can’t expect me to just open up my guns on a government installation.”

“It belongs to the Tau now. And if they manage to get their White Death distributed in the quantities they must surely possess …”

“Yeah, yeah. I get the picture. Could be worse than the last time,” he finished in a mutter.

“Last time?” Melissa raised.

“Never mind. Suffice it to say I’ve been through this kind of thing before. Just wanted you folks to know that. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a chance in hell I’d even be listening to ya now. But I still can’t up and start blowing the crap out of Livermore Air Force Base.”

“Because you lack equipment capable of doing it?”

Pop seemed to take offense at that. “Listen, fella, I got it all. Eight-inch guns, 155mm howitzers, 105s. But, hey, I ain’t about to start firing on a U.S. military installation just on your say-so. I’ll help you seal it off until we can get real help here. That’s the best I can do.”

The National Artillery Brigade was well along in its process for setting up by the time Pop Keller drove his truck into the parking lot and through the dilapidated fence that would be shored up by week’s end. Johnny’s eyes gaped at the sight of the artillery pieces being slid into place in the field beyond. Keller had not exaggerated at all. There was a towed 155mm howitzer and a self-propelled gun of the same power, in addition to a smaller 105mm and a monstrous eight-inch cannon with a range of over twelve miles. The smaller artillery pieces had not been unloaded yet and neither had the older, more fragile ones which were mostly for show anyway.

But the NAB’s roster of main battle tanks was already lined up in a row across the field’s center. There were five of them, dating back to the Sherman of World War II, the Pershing of Korea, and the M-47 Patton. In a relative sense, these three were dwarfed by their massive offspring, the original M-60 and its cousin the M-60A1. Wareagle was truly impressed.

For his part, Pop was more interested in checking on his people. A number of them were busy erecting wooden targets that the tanks and smaller artillery pieces would shoot at. Still more were towing the steel carcasses of other vehicles and heavy equipment that would make grand fodder for the big guns. Basically this was just target practice on a massive scale, especially when a member of the audience who was holding the lucky ticket got to fire a howitzer.

All of his people who weren’t working, and plenty of those who should have been, were surrounding the Patriot missile battery off in the corner of the field by itself. It was a lot bigger and more menacing than the image of the gentle defender of the Gulf War, the missile battery itself set apart from the enclosed, cubicle-sized control console. The team members manning the console were explaining their wares to the marveling group, while the six-man security team looked on, unsure of what to do. While it was true that none of the weekend crowd would be permitted within a hundred feet of the battery, the participants in the show felt it was their right to examine it closely. Accordingly, there was even a cluster of onlookers gawking at the battery’s quartet of missile launchers, under the watchful eyes of the security team.

“You boys mind getting back to work?” Pop scolded those crowded near the open door of the control console. And when the men turned back to their chores, he caught a glimpse of the most complicated radar screen he had ever laid eyes on, a yellow arrow sweeping across a green grid.

“This thing on?” Pop called up to the two men seated behind the controls, much to the chagrin of the security personnel.

The two men’s eyes gestured toward the truck behind them. “Once it’s out of the box, we got no choice. Kill the batteries and blow the circuit board otherwise.”

“Just watch you don’t lean on the fire button. I ain’t got a spare mill lying around.”

“Will do, sir.”

“You’re quite certain of this, of course, Mr. Griggs.”

Billy Boy looked McCracken’s way. “I know I saw his injun friend you told me to watch for and the owner of some artillery show powwowing in town. Injun gets his way, they could do us some damage.”

“Then I suppose we will have to do them some damage, won’t we? Where are they, Mr. Griggs?”

“Field about six miles from here.”

“You have more specific coordinates?”

“Come up with them in a few seconds for you.”

The old man had already picked up his walkie-talkie. “Wheel out the FROG missile batteries,” he ordered into it. “Prepare to fire on the following coordinates….”

Jed Long and Teddy Worth had shipped out to Germany with the first-generation Patriot batteries. They’d been transferred to Israel during the Gulf War and spent the rest of their tour there trying to teach their headstrong Israeli replacements how the system really worked, then update them when the new and improved software arrived. Long and Worth had been made to feel like heroes in that country, and they missed not only that but also the constant edge they had lived on during those months. They’d shot down all four Scuds they had locked onto, and if there was a greater rush than the roughly forty seconds between detection and impact, neither of them had ever felt it.

They returned Stateside just in time for the success of the Patriot to be challenged on all quarters. Some asshole from MIT had turned against the system, and the Senate Appropriations Committee was quick to follow suit. Even segments of the military had jumped on the bandwagon. Jed Long and Terry Worth fumed. Why don’t they ask the people who really know? they wondered. They offered to testify in front of anyone who would listen.

No one was interested.

Someday, Long and North told themselves frequently, someday we’ll show them….

But not today. Long was seated in front of the radar screen with legs stretched before him and hands clasped behind his head. Worth was checking the final connections, thinking maybe it would be better if they packed everything back up and brought it out again come next weekend. Truth was, somebody at the Pentagon had told them opening day was yesterday, so they’d scrambled to get here a day late only to find out they were five days early.

A sudden rapid chirping sound had Long lunging forward in his chair, almost toppling it behind him.

“What the fuck …”

Worth had leapt up behind him. “Shit,” he said disbelievingly, “we got incoming.”

“This some kind of joke? …”

“Thirty seconds to impact,” Long said.

“Four incoming,” Worth followed. “I got four incoming.”

“Positive ID obtained. FROGS!” Long shouted, referring to the computer’s identification of the missiles hurtling their way. “Four fucking FROGS!”

“Jesus Christ …”

Worth knew that even under the best of conditions, the Patriot’s strike rate was.72. With four Patriots to fire at four incomings, that meant the odds of successful intercept were not good at all. Still, this updated version of the Patriot contained a stronger explosive designed to detonate the enemy warhead on impact, instead of just destroying the missile. But it hadn’t been tested in battle yet.

“System is enabled.” Long glanced back at Worth. “What the fuck do we do?”

“Time to impact?”

“Fifteen seconds …”

“Fire!” Worth exclaimed. In that instant he was back in Israel. The feeling was the same, everything was the same, including the devastation four FROG (free rocket over ground) missiles would cause if they impacted.

Long hit the auto button three seconds later when the screen flashed red, signaling that the Patriot computer had locked on. The auto button swung the battery into intercept mode. The launcher had already turned to face the incomings, and the four Patriots shot out at millisecond intervals with deafening roars that split the air over the field. Some of the NAB’s workers figured there’d been an accidental explosion and hit the ground for safety. Others just stood there dumbstruck as the red and white missiles rocketed upward toward nothing.

“Oh fuck,” said Pop, who like the others could not yet see the FROG missiles the Patriots were speeding to intercept.

At the very last, several NAB members briefly glimpsed the streaking Patriots converging on shiny spots in the sky. In the next instant, four explosions sounded over the field, great thunderclaps in the sky that showered sprays of what looked like fireworks down toward the ground.

Instinct had forced Pop Keller into a crouch. He couldn’t believe what had just happened. The bastards at the air force base had goddamn fired on him! The son-of-a-bitch Indian was right! Pop stood up painfully, still half squinting, and pulled the hands from his ears.

“Now I’m mad,” he said. “Now I’m fucking pissed.” He looked toward Wareagle. “Let me have those coordinates, Injun. This is gonna be like the Little Big Horn all over again.”

Chapter 35

Arnold Rothstein smiled at the muffled sound of the distant explosions. He stayed by the window for several moments before turning back toward McCracken.

“It would seem the threat your friend posed to us has been eliminated.”

Blaine gritted his teeth. In that instant he wanted more than anything to lunge at the old man, but he knew he’d never get past the Twins.

“We are the world’s only chance,” Rothstein insisted. “I must ask you to reconsider or join your friend in futility.”

Blaine shook his head. “Sorry.”

“Such a waste …” The old man’s eyes moved from McCracken to the Twins, then back again. “They will be quick in their work. It is the least I can do for you. Of course, it would have been easier still if you had just let them dispatch you quietly in that hotel in Turkey. Losing you after that became a real concern of mine.”

“Until the toymaker’s, of course.”

Arnold Rothstein looked at him with a mixture of confusion and disinterest.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about….”

“Nor do I care. Good-bye, Mr. McCracken.”

“But if it wasn’t you, then who …”

Arnold Rothstein was gazing at the Twins once more. “You understand how I want it done?”

“Yes,” they replied in unison.

“Lock him in one of the basement storage rooms, while you sweep the grounds one last time.” Rothstein’s eyes fell on Blaine. “Make sure he has no more surprises waiting for us before we bring out the remaining transports. Then kill him.”

“You’re making a mistake, Rothstein,” McCracken said, as the Twins hoisted him to his feet and started to lead him to the door. “Listen to me. You’ve missed something here — we both have.”

Rothstein waved Blaine off and turned his back so that he was facing the window. Before McCracken could speak again, the Twins brought him into the corridor and yanked him forward to the stairs. There was no sense in resisting. His mind, in any case, was elsewhere.

Rothstein hadn’t been behind the attack at the toymaker’s in Germany!

Someone else was involved. Another party, another force …

Who? Why?

Four flights of stairs later, they reached the basement. A door to one of the supply rooms was already open. The Twins pushed him through. One of them turned on a light.

The manacles were waiting for him, fastened into the far wall of a room that was utterly empty. The Twins were grinning. One led him forward. The other hung back slightly. The closer one removed his leg chains and handcuffs, then locked his feet and hands into the manacles. He was spread-eagled, face against the wall, with no room for maneuvering.

“We’ll be back for you,” they said together, and McCracken heard the door close behind them.

“Soon as you get there,” Pop Keller had instructed just before Johnny set off for Livermore Air Force Base, “call me up on the radio and I’ll start the barrage.” After the big Indian had nodded, Pop’s gaze drifted over his shoulder. “You really fixin’ on bringing these boys with you?”

Johnny turned to look at the men of No Town who were packed again in Blue Thunder. In the driver’s seat, Toothless Jim Jackson was giving the old engine gas to keep it from stalling out.

“I don’t believe I have a choice,” Wareagle replied.

“Yes, you do, friend. Yes, you do,” Pop Keller had said, the last of his words nearly drowned out by the approach of a tank column led by the Sherman and backed up by the M-60A1 with the three others in between. “Figure you could use some close support.”

Johnny had flashed one of his rare smiles.

He drove Pop’s truck at the head of the procession that had Blue Thunder bringing up the rear. The artillery barrage courtesy of NAB’s two 155mm, 105mm, and eight-inch guns would begin as soon as Johnny and his tanks reached the perimeter of the base. His small column was able to maintain a respectable clip of just over fifteen miles per hour straight over land, cutting across roads only when necessary. The Pershing slipped a tread just past the halfway point, and the Patton’s engine overheated with just a quarter-mile to go, leaving the crusty Sherman and the far feistier M-60 prototypes to aid in the assault.

A hundred yards from the main gate of the base, Johnny lifted Pop’s CB to his lips.

“Come in, Pop.”

“Right here, son.”

“I’m ready.”

“So am I.”

McCracken was still trying to figure out a way to slip out of the chains fastening him tight to the wall when the first explosion rocked the building. A second one followed almost immediately, and loosened plaster from the walls showered him. Three more blasts came in rapid succession, and fragments of the ceiling caved in.

Johnny! It had to be Johnny! Not dead at all and outdoing even himself!

The next explosions shook the floor and opened wide fissures in the walls. His manacles, only crudely driven home, showed signs of weakening. Blaine began pulling with all his strength, feeling them begin to give. His right hand came free first, followed by his left. From there, it was a simple matter to pull the manacles binding his legs from the crumbling wall.

It was impossible to open the manacles. While they would be uncomfortable, they would hardly prove a hindrance. With the explosions sounding even more regularly now, Blaine rushed for the door. It had been locked from the outside, but the mechanism was simple and already weakened by the blasts. A quick series of kicks shattered the latch, and McCracken burst into the corridor.

Not all the initial explosions were on the mark, and Johnny called back to Pop to adjust the coordinates slightly. He stepped out of the truck to find Tyrell Loon coming his way, while the rest of Blue Thunder’s passengers distributed Heydan Larroux’s weapons amongst themselves, each searching for the one that best suited his fancy.

“We be ready,” Loon announced.

“Not yet, Sheriff.”

“When?”

“First I have work to do by myself inside.”

Loon wasn’t arguing. “Fine with me. Think even the Old One would understand. Shit, I’m still close enough to bring ya luck, don’t ya think?”

“I do,” Johnny said, turning away.

“How will we know when to follow?”

Johnny looked back at him. “You’ll know.”

Wareagle left the sheriff and his men there outside the fence and gave the tanks the signal to roll straight on. He walked alongside the old Sherman, as the M-60 and M-60A1 plowed right through the base’s security fence.

The explosions in the central area were coming every three or four seconds now. Huge plumes of smoke and debris coughed into the air with each blast. The tanks continued on, crashing through what they could not easily avoid. The Sherman hung back long enough for a path to be cleared for it, but had pulled up even by the time its offspring rolled onto the tarmac. A few of the hundred or so troops rushing about caught sight of the trio of tanks and pointed their way frantically. The tanks stopped and began to fire.

One by one their gun turrets snapped backward as shells were expelled. The explosions caught the enemy where they stood. The M-60A1 made a trio of armored personnel carriers its primary targets and blew them apart before any could start into motion. The Sherman and the M-60 focused their fire in any direction where congestions of the enemy could be found. All return volleys were token. The opposition was being blasted from all angles at once, and fear had replaced confidence in their motions.

The gunner in the M-60A1, who had performed the same service in Vietnam for considerably less money, saw the big Indian dart suddenly before his view plate toward the enemy forces. The gunner closed his eyes for an instant, as another shell was expelled. When he gazed back outward, the Indian was gone.

Arnold Rothstein grasped Billy Griggs by the lapels.

“The White Death, you’ve got to save it! Do you hear me? You’ve got to save it!”

Griggs looked at the old man in bewilderment.

“Drive it out of here! Wait until the battle recedes and drive it out of here. The tanker’s armored. You can make it. Get to the backup rendezvous point! I’ll meet you there!”

Billy Boy knew that the old dude was crackers, had known it for some time, but playing along at this point could be his ticket to bigger and better things. Besides, maybe he’d just up and drive that supertanker, three times the capacity of a normal oil truck, full of the White Death wherever he damn well pleased. Use it for his own gains before the old guy was any the wiser, his own plan in shambles.

Griggs headed for the basement and the underground passage that led to the hangar where the tanker was stored.

McCracken knew the White Death would be hidden out of plain sight and well protected. That made one of the hangars the most logical choice, but which one?

Blaine burst out of the base headquarters into the chaos that the explosions had caused. The huge artillery shells continued to carve craters everywhere they hit. The Tau rushed about in all directions. In the confusion, Blaine decided he could safely bypass the hangar the army of the Tau had poured from to catch his commando team in an ambush. Instead, he headed for the one next to it first, worked open the door, and slid inside.

Windows shattered by the numerous explosions provided the only light, but it was enough for Blaine to see dozens of crates spread out everywhere. Weathered and browned, they were obviously the ones that had been pulled from the Nazi storage chamber at the dig site in Ephesus. Closer inspection revealed that the crates were empty. The tanks that had held the White Death were gone.

Glass shattered, and McCracken blamed it first on another explosion until he heard the faint flutter of footsteps. He froze, turned left and then right.

The Twins were approaching him from either side of the hangar. They were bare-chested, massive muscles rippling with each step. Neither showed a weapon. Both were smiling.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

The one in the hangar’s rear rushed at him with a throaty rasp. The burst of speed he managed was incredible, so fast that he never noticed Blaine grasp the lid off one of the worthless crates and slash it forward. The rushing Twin managed to get his hands up, and the lid shattered into splinters over them, catching just enough of his head to daze him. He wobbled on his feet and started to list. Blaine drew his arm overhead for the kill and felt his still-manacled hand jerk backward as it was twisted. The force of the move pitched him through the air, and he collided with yet more of the abandoned crates.

Stunned, Blaine nonetheless regained his feet without even pausing for breath. The smiling Twin who had tossed him effortlessly aside stalked toward him, hands held leisurely near his waist. The wounded Twin was just regaining his senses and joined the approach. Blood dripped from his scalp and soaked his hair.

McCracken backpedaled, feeling his way with his feet. The Twins closed on him from angles that made escape between them impossible. Blaine continued to back up until his shoulders came to rest against the hangar wall, with one of the blast-shattered windows just to his right.

The unbloodied Twin threw himself into a lunge, as Blaine’s hand darted up and to the side. He snapped off a thick shard of glass from the window and thrust it toward the midsection of the lunging Twin. In his mind McCracken pictured the shard slicing through flesh and shredding everything in its path. He was surprised to see the Twin still smiling at him and gazed down.

The Twin had caught the shard and closed his hand around it. Blood oozed from it to the asphalt surface below. Blaine lashed out with his free hand, steel manacle employed as a weapon, but the Twin parried the blow and grabbed hold of the chain dangling from McCracken’s wrist to tie him up. They struggled across the floor, while the other Twin moved warily, choosing his spot, waiting.

The Twin McCracken was locked up with succeeded in driving the glass shard backward. Now it was Blaine’s hand that began to spill blood. Before he could reroute the motion, the Twin had somehow twisted the shard from his grasp and sent it slashing upward behind his own momentum. Blaine tried to deflect it with the manacle that the Twin still held, but the shard sliced a thin gash diagonally across his stomach and chest. The Twin followed with a downward swipe that McCracken managed to block with his other manacle. He fixed his arm on that side into an elbow strike and slammed it into the Twin’s face.

Blaine felt teeth crunch on impact. The Twin recoiled, and McCracken realized that he had lost track of the other just in time to spin to the side. As a result, the second Twin’s blow caught him in the hard part of the skull instead of the temple. The blow stunned him and it was all he could do to deflect the blinding flurry of blows that followed.

His motions brought him right back into the range of the Twin whose front teeth were now missing. A fist slammed into Blaine’s kidney, and then his knee was kicked out. McCracken never hit the floor, though, because the Twin who still had his teeth caught him and drove him headfirst into the wall. Stars exploded before Blaine’s eyes, and he flailed out wildly. He managed to rake the Twin’s face with his manacle, but the bastard caught his next blow at its weakest, and McCracken felt his own momentum joined and used against him.

Blaine had time to actually record the fact that he was airborne and flying toward the hangar’s entrance. It was like diving off the high board, but the surface he was heading for was not nearly as hospitable. He managed to get his hands out, and the manacles clanged against the floor on impact. His chin took the brunt of the rest. He could feel it split and the blood stream outward. He tried to push off with his hands, but his arms were numb and wouldn’t support him. He realized that he was looking at a pair of brown boots that had somehow materialized before him. He feared that one of the Twins had circled round for the kill.

Except that he recalled that the boots the Twins were wearing had been black. McCracken turned his gaze higher.

And Johnny Wareagle looked down at him.

The most glorious, wonderful, perfect sight McCracken had ever seen!

Johnny smiled at Blaine and stepped past him, placing his frame between McCracken and the Twins.

The Twins hesitated briefly before coming at Wareagle. When they attacked, closing from opposite sides, their moves were perfect reflections of each other.

At the last possible instant, in a motion that defied the eye, Johnny twisted from their path. The Twins’ blows slammed into each other. Wareagle grabbed hold of the one with ruined teeth, and this Twin made the mistake of trying to match strength with him. The Indian didn’t give at all. A fist pushed into the muscles layered over the Twin’s solar plexus. His gasp sounded like air pouring out of a spiked tire. The Indian slammed a second blow into his face, and blood exploded from the remnants of his nose.

The second Twin spun toward Johnny and actually leapt over the body of his crumpling brother. Wareagle stretched out his arms and pushed him farther through the air. He landed near McCracken and dropped his hand toward a pistol stowed in a leather ankle holster.

Blaine grabbed the hand before he could reach it.

“Not today,” he said, and twisted the hand sharply to the right, snapping the wrist.

The Twin grasped for the gun with his other hand, and McCracken slammed a blow up under his chin and then rammed his knuckles into the Twin’s strung-out throat. Cartilage crackled. His Adam’s apple snapped free on impact. The Twin keeled over, heaving for air as he fell dying.

The other Twin had gone for his gun as well, managing to free it with an enraged scream as he saw his brother die. Wareagle stopped its progress before the final Twin could aim. A harmless shot flew skyward as the Indian clamped a knee against the man’s elbow and jerked his wrist.

The snap sounded like a door slamming. Johnny looped his free hand around the Twin’s head and twisted it violently. The body stiffened, then crumpled to the floor.

“Blainey,” Wareagle said, turning.

“ ’Bout time you showed up, Indian.”

The monstrous tanker truck had been armored from front to back. Billy Boy Griggs pulled himself into the cab and realized that his biggest problem might be the fact that he could barely see over the dashboard. He placed his pistol on the seat right next to him and propped himself up as high as he could. The tanker was facing the hangar’s front, but there was enough room inside for him to turn it all the way around and slam his way out through the back. Outside the battle was receding, the explosions far less numerous now. The invaders had come with tanks, and there was no way one of those was going to catch up with this baby. If he played his cards right, they might not even notice his departure through the rear of the base until it was too late. The cover of buildings would shield him well enough to ensure his escape.

Billy jammed his key into the ignition and turned it. A click followed, but it came from behind him rather than from the steering column. He felt the cold steel of a gun barrel touch the back of his head. His right hand was already going for his pistol, and he had closed on the handle when a voice found his ear.

“Fuck you,” said Sal Belamo.

And Sal pulled the trigger.

Outside, the tanks had ceased firing. Before them, the remaining members of the Tau had begun scampering out from their positions of cover with flight on their minds. Some searched for still-functional vehicles. Others sought still-workable weapons. Still more simply tried to run.

None of them succeeded.

On cue, the men of No Town swept onto the ravaged, charred air base led by Sheriff Tyrell Loon. There was no real plan to their approach, no complicated pattern to adhere to. But there were enough of them to cover a spread sufficient to prevent the flood of armed and unarmed men from escaping. Loon held his M-16 to the sky and fired off a burst.

“Good idea if all you just stay as you be!” he yelled out to them. When they had obliged, he turned to share a smile with Toothless Jim Jackson.

And the Old One smiled back.

Tyrell Loon rubbed his eyes and held them closed, then opened them slowly.

She was gone. Jackson was standing a yard past where Tyrell thought he had seen her, grinning at him toothlessly, obviously not having seen a thing.

“Let’s round ’em up,” said Sheriff Loon.

Sal Belamo was watching the roundup in amazement, when Blaine and Johnny emerged from the hangar.

“Looks like we missed all the fun, boss.”

“My guess is you had plenty of your own,” Blaine said.

Johnny had helped him wrap some cloth around the neat slice in his palm from the glass shard. It had stopped the blood from dripping, but could do nothing about the throbbing. Sal’s shoulder, meanwhile, was a mess, bloody and shredded, a makeshift tourniquet doing the best it could to stem the flow.

“You find the White Death, Sal?”

“In a tanker big as a house. No sign of Rothstein, though.”

“I didn’t think there would be.”

“You don’t sound too worried about it.”

“Let’s see if I’m right first.”

Chapter 36

The figure that descended under cover of darkness through the hatchway into Nineteen’s new irrigation works did so using his flashlight only sporadically; he knew this land well enough not to require its use any more than that. The hose he needed to perform his task was stored in a cabinet within. When all was ready, he would call for his trucks to make their way onto the property in the guise of the propane vehicles that provided the residents with most of their energy needs.

He slid by the massive tanks and was almost to the cabinet holding the hose when the thick fluorescent lighting snapped on. Arnold Rothstein stiffened and turned slowly.

“They’re empty,” Blaine McCracken said as he stepped out of the shadows.

“You were expecting me,” was all Rothstein could think to say.

“I also found your boxes containing the White Death already loaded into those explosive activators you’ve been using around the world. Excellent design. My compliments.”

“How could you have known to come here?” he asked McCracken, exasperated. “How?”

Just to McCracken’s rear stood Johnny Wareagle, Melissa Hazelhurst, and Sal Belamo with his arm held firmly in a sling. His free hand held a gun low by his hip. Blaine’s injured hand was bandaged as well, and his chin showed a gauze strip taped across it.

“I remembered Tovah saying that you had recently arranged for a system upgrade,” he said. “I figured you had your own plans for it.”

Their eyes wandered to the tanks simultaneously.

“How long since they’ve held water?” Blaine asked the old man.

“Since they were installed six months ago.”

“Backup system?”

Rothstein nodded. “Built at the same time.”

“With the groundwork laid well before that. I’d say dating back to the original construction of this kibbutz, because you planned to someday make use of it even then.”

“Apparently, Mr. McCracken, I underestimated you.”

“No, you just made it easy for me. The White Death we found at Livermore came exclusively from the empty crates you returned to Ephesus for. That meant the stockpile you were able to manufacture after you finally re-created the original formula was somewhere else. Here.” Blaine hesitated and took a single step forward. “At least was.”

Rothstein regarded him quizzically. “What do you mean ‘was’? What have you done with the White Death, McCracken?”

“Nothing.”

“But you said it was gone.”

“It is, Rothstein, but not thanks to me. You were too late. And so were we.”

McCracken had returned to Israel in the same jet that had brought him and the commandos of Nineteen to America, arriving a few hours before dawn on Monday. Accompanying him along with the survivors who were well enough to travel had been Johnny, Sal Belamo, and Melissa. Blaine’s numerous wounds had made for a very uncomfortable journey. Though none was serious, they all ached nonetheless, and the bandages and dressings had him feeling confined and restricted.

“Something’s wrong,” one of the commandos had said as they came within range of the front gate. “I don’t see the—”

She had stopped because suddenly she had seen, seen the security gate flapping slightly in the wind. Blaine had emerged from the lead car ahead of her. They had noticed the first of the bodies at the same moment. One of the guards had been dragged into the low underbrush rimming the entrance. Only her boots protruded. McCracken had swung round to find Johnny Wareagle inspecting the ground between their lead car and the gate.

“The killers are gone, Blainey.”

“How long, Indian?”

“Less than an hour. Three trucks, two of them heavy.”

“Tankers?”

“Possibly.”

Beyond the gate Nineteen had become a killing ground. McCracken had walked slowly with Johnny by his side, seeing things as they had unfolded. Women would have emerged from their houses at the first sign of trouble. But whoever had come in the trucks were well prepared. Bodies lay on porches or near them. Some of the rifles had been fired. Some hadn’t.

“You expected this,” Rothstein said before Blaine had finished his story. They were still standing in the cellar that held the works for Nineteen’s irrigation system.

“I feared it, thanks to you.”

“Me?”

“You tipped me off without even realizing it yourself. You said you lost me after the shootout with the Twins at the hotel in Izmir. That meant somebody else had to be behind the attack in Germany.”

“What attack? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“That’s the problem, Rothstein. Someone else was shadowing you all along, mirroring your moves. Waiting. And you played right into their hands.”

“And you’re saying they have the White Death? Impossible! A lie!”

McCracken slid forward and froze Rothstein with his stare. “The killings were no lie. Would you like to take a stroll with me and count the bodies? Eleven women were killed here tonight. It’s your fault, Mr. Rothstein. You used these women, and it cost those eleven of them their lives.”

“I didn’t know. How could I?”

“You didn’t bother to. Fanatics like you are convinced your vision is so pure that nothing can stop it from being attained. But it never happens. Sometimes you stop yourselves. Sometimes you get stopped.”

Rothstein tried to look strong. “And you are going to stop me, of course.”

“No, I think I’ll leave the rest of that task to someone else….”

Blaine and Johnny moved to the side to allow Tovah to wheel her chair forward. It was all her bony hands could do to manage the effort. A shawl covered her legs. A 9mm pistol rested atop it.

“Tovah!” Arnold Rothstein gasped.

“You lied to me, Ari,” the old woman accused.

“Only to spare you.”

She shook her head. “No. Again, to spare yourself. You began planning this forty-five years ago. Everything else was just a stepping-stone. And what you have sown the seeds for, what you have done to us — to our people — without realizing….”

“What?” Rothstein raised, dumbfounded.

“You really don’t get it, do you?” Blaine asked him. “It’s right here before your eyes and you can’t see it.”

“Help me. Let me make amends. Tell me!”

As Blaine told his story, Arnold Rothstein sank to his knees and began to sob.

“Leave us,” the old woman told those around her sternly ten minutes later.

Blaine led the way toward the stairs.

“Tovah,” her brother pleaded, “part of what I did was for our own good, the good of Israel. I know you cannot see that now, but you will. I could have fashioned a world without fear for us. I could have ensured the safety and sanctity of our borders until the end of time.”

“And which end is that now, Ari? We have shared many, seen many. Tonight must come another,” the old woman said, and raised the pistol.

Blaine and the others were halfway up the steps by then and none of them looked back.

“Tovah, you must listen to me!”

“Ari,” Tovah muttered. “My poor Ari …”

Sal Belamo was the last one out of the underground structure, and Blaine lowered the doors after him.

“Listen to me, Tovah. Please lis—”

Rothstein’s words vanished behind the sealed door. The next sounds reached their ears as dull thuds.

A gunshot, followed by one more, and then another.

“Let’s go, Johnny,” Blaine said. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

The mansion high up on the Bokelberg where McCracken had met the toymaker and encountered the Tau was situated off by itself, with the nearest other Villen only vaguely in sight. There would be at least two dozen guards patrolling the grounds tonight, two or three times as many as the night Blaine had come here before. He was certain of that much, just as he knew that a frontal approach to the house was out of the question. How to get inside, then?

The idea had come from Sal Belamo, the necessary equipment obtained after a single phone call Tovah had suggested they make. The helicopter that was now closing on the house was part of that equipment. It was equipped with silent-running capability and infrared sighting that allowed the pilot to fly without lights. Because “silent” was a relative term in this case, it was arranged that an emergency repair crew would be jackhammering away at the road just down the street.

From a hundred and fifty feet above the house, McCracken could see little of the grounds below. He kept his focus on the roof as the chopper circled and tested the wind. To prevent being spotted from ground level, he had donned black clothes, gloves, and boots, and had smeared blackout cream all over his face.

McCracken checked his watch. Right on cue, Sal Belamo’s construction crew went to work. It was time.

Blaine dropped the black nylon line from the belly of the chopper. It uncoiled swiftly like a snake and dangled a few feet from the roof’s surface, swaying in the night. McCracken took one last deep breath and hoisted himself out onto it.

The slide came easily, except for the stinging pain it brought back to his bandaged hand. He covered the distance in less than four seconds and hit the roof with a thump.

The sloping roof was formed of slate. McCracken eased himself to its rear, where the congestion of guards below was somewhat lighter than the front. He removed his pack from his shoulders and took from it pylons and black nylon cord. Then he knelt down and set about the task of wedging the pylons into the roof with a small hammer.

When this task was completed, he slid the nylon cord into the pylons and then ran it through the proper slots in his vest. He was now ready to rappel the short six-foot drop to the window through which he planned on gaining entry. McCracken stuck the handle of his glass-cutting knife in his mouth and eased himself off the roof. Popping the lock would have been simpler, but Blaine suspected that an elaborate alarm system would be triggered should any latch be opened.

He dropped off the roof and dangled briefly in front of the window before sliding over to the left of it. Pressed against the house, he held himself steady with his left hand and worked the blade along the frame with his bandaged right hand, gritting his teeth against the pain as he sliced through the putty holding the glass into place. He managed to do a little more than half the window before switching to the right side, and he used his left hand to complete the job. After a few more seconds of work, the lines of cuts were on the verge of joining up with each other.

Afraid of what would happen if the glass popped inward and shattered, McCracken maneuvered so that he was directly in front of the window. He affixed a pair of handle-equipped suction cups to the glass, and only then did he finish cutting through the window. He tugged slightly on the suction cups, and the glass came back with them. He lowered the large pane cautiously in through the now-vacant space. He set it to the side of the frame and then climbed into the room.

Blaine moved straight for the door of the darkened room and pressed his ear against it. Footsteps were approaching, a patrolling guard not in any particular rush. Blaine turned and pressed his back against the door. Gazing into the deep part of the room now, something about the far wall grabbed his eye. He slid away from the door and reached back for his flashlight. Its narrow beam found the wall and began tracing its length.

The wall was taken up completely by a map of the world that stretched from floor to ceiling. McCracken had never seen a more complete one. Major cities and their populations the world over were highlighted. Then, as he gazed at it closer, he realized it wasn’t a map at all.

It was a battle plan.

The cities highlighted were the centers of the world’s commerce and government. The White Death released randomly within them would cause chaos and panic on an unthinkable level as millions of innocent people were blinded. It would be done simultaneously, every part of the world thrown into total disarray at the same time. The chaos would feed off itself.

Until someone stepped in to restore order.

McCracken moved closer to the map again. It did not reflect the vast changes in the old Soviet Union, or even the reunification of Germany. The city populations were significantly off as well, the figures more consistent with a decade ago, or even longer ago than that. Those who had drawn it had been waiting a very long time for what seemed at last to be within their reach.

He scanned the room further. Flat wooden tables were arranged haphazardly, apparently at random. Other maps, more focused and detailed, were spread upon them. On some the folds were still present. This room was evidently a planning or command center, and it had recently been the center of much activity.

Blaine glided back to the door and pressed his ear against it. Nothing. The guard must have been at the other end of the hall. McCracken moved his hand to the knob and turned it. The door gave, and he cracked it open enough to make sure the guard would notice when he came by on his rounds. Then he stepped back and pressed himself against the near wall.

The footsteps returned down the corridor seconds later, a shadow sliding through the crack in the door when the guard stopped before it. Blaine watched a hand push the door slowly open, and then a figure entered wearing a black uniform with the insignia of the Nazi SS upon its shoulder.

McCracken sprang before the guard was all the way inside. He clamped a hand over the man’s mouth and slammed his head backward against the wall. When the guard continued to struggle, he smashed it again until he felt the skull give. The guard’s eyes glazed over. He slumped downward, dragging a trail of blood behind him.

Blaine closed the door and pulled the body into the center of the room. It took under three minutes to replace his own clothes with the SS uniform. The fit was tight, but good enough. McCracken had no illusions that the guise would hold up to close scrutiny; he was merely looking for any edge that would lead to more freedom of movement. He finished tightening the belt and wiped the blackout cream from his face before stepping into the corridor.

He was on the mansion’s third floor; the toymaker’s workshop was on the second. He headed down the main stairwell, crossing paths with no one. On the second floor, the door to the toymaker’s workshop was open. A radio was badly tuned to a station that played old German music. He recognized the pungent scents of model glue and molded plastic from his previous visit here. The toymaker’s head was resting on his worktable next to the radio on the other side of the room. McCracken’s first thought was that he might be dead. Approaching closer, though, he heard the old man snoring, lost in a deep sleep. Blaine continued on toward the far-right-hand portion of the room, toward the sheet-covered collection of models that Tessen had steered him away from in his last visit here. McCracken pulled one of the sheets back and instantly understood why.

The models, still in progress and reeking of strong glue, were of a number of cities. They weren’t marked yet, but Blaine easily recognized London, Washington, and Tel Aviv from their distinctive skylines. These were by far the toymaker’s largest and most intricate creations, each taking up the size of a Ping-Pong table. Removing the rest of the sheets would undoubtedly reveal more cities from all across the world, not re-creations this time, but predictions of things to come. Years of work had gone into them and, ironically, they seemed at last on the verge of completion. All that was missing from London and New York were the bodies, the depictions of chaos and bloodshed in the streets below. But they would be added soon enough, once the White Death was released to wreak havoc throughout the world. The old man would have his pictures, his videos. And he would be busy for years to come, because these cities marked only the beginning.

McCracken came to the models of Washington and Tel Aviv and froze. Apparently, in these two cases the toymaker hadn’t been able to wait, and the resulting sight was bone-chilling. The old man had outdone himself. Even in miniature, the panic, the utter desperation of cities caught in the merciless grip of the White Death, was clear. Cars had smashed into each other. Small figures writhed and clawed at the air. Blaine could almost hear the screams.

“You look quite good in that uniform, Mr. McCracken,” a voice called from behind him.

Blaine turned around slowly.

“You didn’t go for your gun. I’m disappointed,” said Hans Tessen. “Take the pistol out slowly with two fingers and toss it toward me, please.”

McCracken did as he was told. The pistol clanged against the floor and slid the Nazi’s way.

“Congratulations on a brilliant acting job,” Blaine told him.

Tessen kept his gun steady, a smile brewing on his lips. “I was quite good, wasn’t I?”

“I should have killed you myself.”

“But we were allies, were we not? Don’t forget that I saved your life in Izmir. From the Tau, of all forces.”

“To further your own interests, of course.”

Tessen nodded, beaming. “And why not, Mr. McCracken? So strange life is, so theatrical.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong: you’re one of the leaders of this bunch. Yes?”

“If by ‘bunch’ you are referring to a Nazi movement that now spans all corners of the globe, yes, I am.” He stiffened his chin. His crew cut gleamed in the naked light of the room. “Ever since the end of the war, I have worked toward the day that is almost upon us. A day, I regret to tell you, you will not live to see.”

“Not a sight I would cherish.”

“Oh, but it will be one to behold. Our destiny achieved at long last. We were not wrong in our aims in World War II; we were merely ahead of our time. Time has finally caught up with us.”

“You’re dreaming.”

“Apparently so is a very large segment of the population of your country. That is where our literature has been shipped from, where our swastikas have been sewn and molded, and where a huge portion of the funds that helped sustain our dreams has originated.” Tessen came a little closer, one of his hands sliding affectionately over one of the toymaker’s World War II models. “Look around you, Mr. McCracken. Look at the world. The economic structure is on the verge of collapsing. The middle class has been lumped into the lower class. People are poor. People are angry. They crave order, anything that can give them back what they feel rightfully belongs to them. In every country, not just the U.S., support for our movements has been overwhelming, because order is what we offer. The anger and frustration that has allowed our movement to flourish again here in Germany is being mirrored all over the world. Our people are out there and they are ready, they are committed. They go by different names in different corners of the world — the Ku Klux Klan, the German People’s Union, the African Resistance Movement — but they stand for the same thing, and they are waiting for the chance we can give them. We will rise back to power because the world will want us, need us.”

Blaine fixed his gaze briefly on the nearly completed models. “Not all the world, apparently.”

“We know where our enemies are, Mr. McCracken. This time they will be neutralized before they can lead the resistance against us.”

“Neutralized with the White Death you now have in your possession.”

Tessen’s smile continued to glow. “I prefer to say back in our possession, and that is precisely why we so desperately required your services. Not to disappoint, you performed wonderfully. You brought us to the White Death. We never could have done it without you, so you see that, more than anyone, you deserve to wear that uniform.”

“The maps that fell into my hands and Hazelhurst’s …”

“Copies made from documents opened up with the reunification of the two Germanys. A terrible oversight on our part, but eventually a blessed one.”

Blaine was nodding. “Because Rothstein’s revived Tau had already removed the White Death from your chamber, and only because of Hazelhurst’s dig did you become aware of that fact.”

“Thanks to your participation, of course.”

“You were in Kansas, at the air force base.”

“Not me, one of my men. We followed you from the time you ‘escaped’ from this house the first time. Unfortunately, the man who trailed you to the United States left the area of that air force base before you turned the tables on your captors. But he had found what I had sent him for, and with the identity of the Tau leader shockingly clear, it was an easy guess as to where the White Death was stored. Of course I don’t have to tell you this; you came to the same conclusion yourself.”

“You never were able to come up with the formula yourselves, were you?”

“But Rothstein was all too happy to fill the void. What we found at that kibbutz was five times the contents of the crates. Five times!” Tessen gloated. “Strange, isn’t it, that we could not act to achieve our destiny until vast reserves of the White Death were available to us? Thanks to Rothstein, that came to pass. And thanks to you, we found Rothstein.”

“So in pursuing its vengeance, the Tau ends up aiding the rise of the Fourth Reich.”

“And why not? The symbol of the Jews helped give birth to the Third. It’s only fitting that the work of the Jews gives rise to the Fourth.”

Again Blaine looked back at the toymaker’s latest models. “Except it’s not going to be only the Jews this time, is it?”

“We have learned from our mistakes, Mr. McCracken. Far more than ethnicity will determine who our enemies are and whom we destroy.”

“The thing that doesn’t figure here is that when your comrades were dying horribly after the war, you must have known the White Death was to blame.”

“We were scattered, running for our lives. By the time we had reorganized sufficiently, the killing had stopped and the entrance to the chamber the Jews had found had been sealed again.”

“Yes, by them.”

“Only we didn’t know about Rothstein. We assumed that our greatest secret was safe again, waiting for us to come and retrieve the reserves to join a new and vast supply.”

“Which might never have happened …”

“If not for the Tau’s return,” Tessen completed. “And then you brought us to them.”

“And now you have the White Death.”

Tessen nodded. “Right here, stored in tanks concealed in a secret subbasement. The tanks have been waiting for it for years. Too bad your mission to destroy it has failed.”

Blaine shook his head. “That wasn’t my mission at all.”

“Please, McCracken,” Tessen scoffed, “spare me.”

“Sorry. Not part of my mission, either. My mission was to find out where you stashed the White Death to make sure it doesn’t live beyond you.”

Tessen was about to respond when gunshots rang out on the grounds of the estate. Rapid fire intermixed with horrible, twisted screams.

“No,” the Nazi muttered, moving toward the window but keeping his eyes fixed on McCracken. “No …”

Blaine held his ground. “You didn’t get all the White Death, Tessen. I found two boxes of explosive devices loaded with it, ready for use. Don’t worry, I’ve already destroyed all of them, except for the ones I thought I might need.”

The screams outside continued, joined by fresh ones from the mansion’s first floor. Glass shattered. The sounds of pounding, desperate footsteps shook the walls. Louder screams followed, lessened, and then became sporadic along with the gunfire. Tessen’s face was a frozen mask of agony. He swung from the window.

“This can’t be!”

“You underestimated your enemies yet again, Tessen. Must be a Nazi trademark.”

“But I can still kill you!” he ranted, fighting to steady his gun Blaine’s way.

“Maybe. Still leaves you just a frightened old man, though. The future of any Reich ends here, no matter what happens to me.”

“Then take that to your grave!”

Tessen’s hand started back on the trigger.

A shot rang out.

The pistol flew out of the Nazi’s hand and shattered the window. He crumpled to his knees, holding his wrist.

“Took you long enough, Indian,” Blaine said to Johnny Wareagle, who stood in the room’s doorway.

“It was more difficult slipping past the exterior guards than I expected, Blainey.”

Blood sliding down his chin from where he had bitten his tongue, Tessen gazed beyond the big Indian at the tight pack of men gathering around him. All of them had thick goggles dangling around their throats, removed from their eyes because there was no longer a need for them. Downstairs and on the grounds beyond, all sounds of resistance had ceased. Tessen knew that even if he yelled out, there was no one left to hear him. He fixed his eyes on a fat, balding man who had advanced ahead of the Indian.

“Who?” he half muttered, half mouthed.

“This is Wolfgang Bertlemass, Tessen,” McCracken explained, “chief administrator of the Document Center and watchdog committed to making sure his country does not fall into the hands of animals like you again.”

“We have had enough of your kind,” Bertlemass accused Tessen, leading the others past Wareagle into the room. “All of us Germans have. And look, Nazi, not all of us are Jews.”

But Wolfgang Bertlemass was a Jew. And back at Nineteen, Tovah had explained the reason behind his role as permanent watchdog, along with his lifelong commitment to the Document Center: Bertlemass was one of the original members of the Tau! Accordingly, he had been all too happy to help them in their efforts following Tessen’s raid on the kibbutz. Bertlemass had supplied the helicopter and equipment, but only on the condition that he and the group he had founded could have a hand in the end. Blaine had agreed without hesitation. The final demise of the Nazi movement deserved to be at the hands of Germans. History had come full circle. The past had at last been atoned for.

Bertlemass and his people, few of them young, most of them carrying at least distant memories of World War II, enveloped Tessen and lifted him to his feet.

“You will watch us set the explosives, Nazi,” Bertlemass spat out. “You will watch your dream die before you do. And I have a message from someone who knows much about death at your hand from a day long ago.”

Tessen looked up at him.

“She says that the priest’s curse is finally complete.”

Bertlemass nodded, and the others led Tessen out of the room. Blaine and Johnny took their time in following. They had just started from the room when a sudden stirring behind them made both turn around fast.

The toymaker stretched his arms behind a yawn and looked their way.

“Did I miss something?” he wondered in a sleepy voice.

“No,” Blaine told him. “It’s over.”