Vortex

Chapter Thirty-five

“It ain’t right, Cap. All diddley shit, if you ask me.”

Maj. Christian Teare eyed Heath from the double-mattressed bunk bed in his private quarters. Night had fallen in the world beyond. Bunker 17’s Yellow Flag alert now stretched into its third day.

“Everything checks out,” Heath offered.

Teare frowned, unsatisfied, curling his fingers through his beard. “This thing’s gonna burst soon and I got an ache in my gut that tells me the spill’s all wrong. The timin’ of that MX shipment’s delivery still bothers the hell outta me.”

“If Red Flag’s coming, they’d want those missiles to be the first out of the gate.”

“Well, Cap, I’d be obliged if somebody would tell me just who ‘they’ are.”

“Major?”

“I mean, we always talk about ‘they’ this and ‘they’ that but who are ‘they’? All we rightly know is that they got a master computer somewhere that fucks ours with a cable when we go into alert status.”

“Somewhere in Washington …”

“Yeah, Cap, tell me all about it. ’Cept then I’d like ya to tell me why we can’t even confirm that much during Yellow Flag.

“That’s the system.”

“Then the system blows horse cock. We got thirty-six MX missiles sittin’ in our silos, and the only thing between us and a launch is a coded sequence on the board in Com-center. Back in Surry Gulch we used to say that manure stinks the least when you’re standin’ knee-deep in it.”

“So?” Heath posed tentatively.

Teare pushed himself up from the bed and stretched. “So, Cap, you’re a communications expert. I want you to spend some time in the computer communications room. I want all incomings monitored. I want to know where the fuck they’re originating from.”

“That’ll take an awful lot of rewiring. Folks in Washington won’t be too pleased.”

“Tough shit.”

“It’ll still take time to pin the transmission down once it comes in.” Heath hesitated. “What happens if it doesn’t come from Washington or NORAD in Colorado?”

“Then they can stick their Yellow Flag up their ass.”

“That’s COBRA,” Bane said, handing the binoculars to King Cong.

They sat hidden in a grove of trees on a hill overlooking the complex. It was four P.M. San Diego time and it had taken a full sixteen sleepless hours to arrive here after obtaining some necessary equipment.

“Jesus shit,” the King muttered. “They got a fuckin’ army down there.”

The steel, barbed wire-topped fence which enclosed the complex of interconnected buildings was patrolled by men holding dogs, weapons or both. They were dressed in green combat fatigues and Special Forces caps.

“That is the army, King,” Bane told him. “COBRA officially qualifies as a defense installation so the government takes responsibility for perimeter security.”

“Terrific …” The King turned his binoculars toward the front gate where a limousine was pulling up. “Better take a look at this, Josh boy.”

Bane refocused the binoculars.

“Make anything?” Cong wondered.

“Two men in the back seat. I can only see their silhouettes.”

The gate guard spoke briefly to the limousine’s driver and then signaled him through. The gate had not even closed entirely when another limousine pulled up.

“Must be havin’ a fuckin’ convention in there,” mumbled the King.

“Something like that,” agreed Bane. “Just one man in the back seat of this one.”

The gate opened and allowed the second limousine to follow the first. Bane swept his binoculars in a wide arc across the spacious grassy grounds between the fence and the main COBRA entrance where both limousines were pulling up.

“A lot of ground to cover in the open,” he said as much to himself as to the King.

“In the daytime anyway. Night’s different.”

“Not for the dogs.”

The King winked. “Then we’ll have to think us up a way around them. You figure the fence is electrified?”

Bane shook his head. “Not the kind of image COBRA wants to present to its neighbors. We passed a little league field about a half-mile back. The problem is that getting inside the complex is only half the fun. I’ve also got to get into the maximum security levels underneath.”

“We could just kill that shit Chilgers.”

“That won’t help us find the machines that will be controlling the paths of the missiles.”

“You mean makes ’em invisible?”

Bane nodded.

“So if we destroy these machines, they’ll become visible again, right?”

Bane shrugged. “I guess.”

“And then the Russians’ll sure as shit know they’re comin’. They ain’t gonna be too happy ’bout that, Josh boy. We might be lookin’ down the mouth of another world war that even the Winter Man couldn’t win.”

Bane recalled Von Goss’s description of the alternative. “At least there’ll still be a world.”

“You ever figure that maybe lettin’ it blow up might be a ways better?”

“Not for long.”

The King cracked a smile. “Me neither.” The smile vanished as his eyes sought out a black knapsack resting against the tree behind him. “Ain’t gonna be enough to just flip the off switches on them machines, Josh boy.”

“That’s why you’re here.”

The King’s eyes held Bane’s as his head twisted back toward the knapsack. “Been a long time since I messed with that kinda stuff. It’s changed a whole lot since Korea.”

“Only for the better. More stability and ten times the power easily.”

“Yeah, yeah. Next thing you’re gonna tell me is that settin’ the charges is like fuckin’: once you get the hang of it, you got it for life.”

“As a matter of fact…” Bane tried for humor but it eluded him. “You’ve helped me get this far, King. Nobody says you have to—”

“Bullshit, Josh boy!” The King’s eyes flamed. “I ain’t felt alive now for ten years. The world’s changed, even Harlem, and there ain’t much room for my kind no more. Know somethin’, Josh boy? I hated Korea while I was over there but I never felt more alive. Last night brought all that back to me, and I’m not much inclined to let it slip through my fuckin’ fingers.”

“We can live without blowing up the whole complex, King.”

“Is that a fact, Josh boy? And how you fixin’ to get by all that genuine government security without the kinda diversion we got stored in that knapsack? I don’t give much of a shit ’bout the world and even less ’bout COBRA. But if you think I’m gonna let you fry alone in there, you’re fuckin’ crazy.”

“If I wasn’t crazy, I wouldn’t be doing this.”

The King steadied his breathing. The massive forearms that could break a man’s spine in two relaxed. “How much of this has to do with that kid I lost?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Bane said reflectively. “A lot I think. I spent over ten years of my life saving little parts of the world, so fighting to save the whole thing at once really isn’t that new. But there’s something about the kid I can’t get out of my mind. I haven’t gone an hour without thinking about him since I pulled him out of that hotel room. I don’t know what it is.”

“I do,” said the King. “The two of you is the same. The kid and you both got powers nobody else got that make you feel all alone. And you both been runnin’ too. People used you for your power for all those years like you just said, and now you see ’em doin’ the same to the kid. The kid tried to run, but they caught him. You tried to run, Josh boy, but there was no place to hide.”

Bane simply shrugged.

“You’ll get him outta there, Josh boy, and I’ll be ’round to help ya.” The King fixed his gaze on the COBRA complex. “I’ll be goin’ in at night. Night’s my time; always has been. ’Cept the way you been talkin’, you gotta get in before I make my move or you’ll have no time to stop ’em. Any ideas how to crash this party?”

Bane watched a third limousine pull up to the gate. “Just one.”

Teke found Chilgers walking through the red-marked COBRA corridors, briefcase in hand. Red lines punctuated the walls in three of the five below-ground levels, signaling access was allowed for only those with top-level security clearances.

“The members of the surgical team have all arrived,” the doctor reported.

“When will you be ready to start?” Chilgers asked, still walking.

“Within six hours, maybe five.”

“So long?”

“They must be briefed on the particulars of the operation. The requirements and procedures promise to be rather … extraordinary.”

“How much will you have to tell them?”

“Just enough to emphasize the importance of the surgery they are about to perform. All members of the team are cleared at the highest levels. They know when to stop asking questions.”

Chilgers stopped. They had reached the private underground garage which allowed him to pass in and out of COBRA’s most secure operations level without ever seeing what lay above. He pushed a button and part of the wall rose, revealing his black limousine with his driver/bodyguard poised to open the door for him.

“I’ll be back in time to watch the operation from the observation area.”

Teke regarded him with shock. “You’re leaving the complex—”

“Business as usual, Doctor, the front must be kept up at all times. There’s a dinner in the city I committed myself to attend months ago and my absence would raise too many eyebrows, political eyebrows. We can’t have that, especially tonight.”

Teke moved with Chilgers toward the car. “We won’t start until you return.”

The colonel seemed not to hear him. “A glorious night, Teke, a glorious night. The dawn of a new age. The greatest weapon presently known to man is about to alter the balance of power, while we stand on the threshold of discovering an even greater weapon that will preserve the new balance. I won’t activate the final stage of Vortex until the operation is underway. There’s a symbolism there I rather fancy.”

Chilgers climbed into the limousine’s back seat and let his chauffeur close the door. Teke stepped back off the steel section of the floor on which the car rested and watched the platform begin its rise toward ground level.

Chapter Thirty-six

Chilgers’ watch ticked past ten P.M. as his limousine returned to the front gate of the COBRA complex. This was to be the greatest day in his professional career, yet he showed no signs of excitement or anxiety. All told, he had never felt calmer or more in control. He leaned back, with a sigh he smothered and a smile he didn’t, reviewing the elements of his strategy which had made Vortex possible from the beginning.

Government minds were too fickle to rely on for the completion of Project Placebo; he’d known that all along. The key was completing delivery of the thirty-six MX missiles with the Vortex generators installed. While one half of the delivery team was fitting the missiles into the silos, the other half was putting into place a series of devices that, together, would jam all computer signals coming into Bunker 17 from Washington and Colorado. The signals into the SAFE interceptor were replaced by those emanating from a COBRA transmitting station here on the base. Coming up with the correct binary code to trigger Red Flag seemed a mathematical impossibility until COBRA’s responsibility for implementing the SAFE system to begin with was considered. Chilgers had had the system designed with a built-in backdoor which would allow him to enter and gain control, knowing someday that might be necessary. It had been a tall order, taking nearly three years to perfect. But Vortex had taken over twenty. The key was patience.

The end result was to place Chilgers in total command of Bunker 17. When Washington made contact to confirm status, they spoke with COBRA personnel on a signal beamed first to Montana, and they had no reason to believe it was anything but legitimate. The officers at the Bunker, meanwhile, had no call to suspect that the continuance of their Yellow Flag status was a product of anything other than a world-crisis situation or elaborate drill. Either way, they would obey their orders without question because that was what they were trained to do. And when Chilgers bumped the status up from Yellow to Red Flag, the buttons would be pressed and the missiles hurled irrevocably at their targets inside Russia.

NORAD headquarters and monitoring boards all over the nation would be aware of the launch. Before any abort or destruct systems could be triggered, however, Vortex would become operational and the missiles wouldn’t be there anymore. A hundred-billion-dollar fail-safe system would be rendered useless. Confusion would result. Men would grope and struggle for answers. Their search would end after twenty-one minutes when the 360 individual warheads detonated over their Soviet targets, catching the Russians utterly by surprise and effectively wiping out both their attack and retaliatory capabilities.

Chilgers allowed his smile to broaden as his limousine wound down the COBRA drive and into the private bay that would lower five stories underground to the complex’s most secure level. Bunker 17 was his. There had been a number of confirmation requests from the base commander over the past twenty-four hours, and since voice contact was technologically impossible, he had no choice but to abide by the computer signals he received in return because they were precisely what they should have been. Bunker 17 was powerless. Washington was powerless. The national-defense war room at NORAD in Colorado was powerless.

The power was all his.

But Vortex was just the beginning, Chilgers thought. A great axiom of weapons research was that a new weapon was obsolete the first time it was used. No matter. Work would be beginning momentarily on the brain of Davey Phelps, and a newer and greater weapon would soon belong to him.

The elevator-car bay came to rest on underground level five. Chilgers checked his watch again. The operation would be underway within a half hour surely. He would contact Teke once inside the complex and find out if there were any new developments. He would watch the operation, a portion anyway, and then retire to his office where the activation button of Red Flag at Bunker 17 had been rigged. He had insisted it be set up that way so that his ultimate moment of control could be enjoyed in total solitude. His vision had been solitary and so, too, would be his success.

His chauffeur pulled open the door and Chilgers climbed out wordlessly. When he hit the blue button on the side wall, the front section slid up, not unlike the simple opening of a garage door. Funny thing about technology, Chilgers reckoned, it was often adapted but seldom changed.

With a taut smile on his lips, the colonel made his way down the red-lined COBRA corridor, hearing the door to his private bay seal closed behind him.

When Bane heard the large door close from his cramped position in the trunk, he knew Chilgers had entered the COBRA complex. Then an extra opening and closing of the driver’s door of the limousine told him the large, muscular chauffeur was staying put, making him Bane’s last obstacle to overcome before entering the top secret underground level.

He went to work on the trunk latch.

Bane’s original plan had been to head off one of the arriving limousines before it reached COBRA and somehow change places with the man in the back seat with the King taking the wheel. Then when a different model limousine left COBRA with a man he recognized from Janie’s picture as Colonel Chilgers in the back, he knew a different strategy was called for.

He followed Chilgers’ car all the way into downtown San Diego, to a Hilton Hotel where some sort of civic function was being held. At that point he toyed briefly with the notion of incapacitating the chauffeur and taking his place behind the wheel. From there, he could kill Chilgers at will but that wasn’t the answer. After all, he had no way of knowing if the colonel was the only one able to trigger the final stage of Vortex. Perhaps there were numerous fallback measures in place. If so, by killing Chilgers Bane would, first, lose his ticket into COBRA and, second, strip himself of a known single quarry.

So when the chauffeur went across the street and into a drug store, Bane chose that moment to work the trunk open, climb in, and wait. The waiting was over now. It was time to enter the complex.

The latch came free. He had only to raise the trunk lid to exit the limousine.

Bane checked his watch: 10:10. If the King was able to gain access to COBRA, and Bane had no doubt he would, his explosive charges would begin at midnight sharp. Bane would have to time everything with that in mind.

His thoughts turned to Davey. Getting himself out of the complex when all hell broke loose would ordinarily be something he’d consider only when his mission was completed. Escape was tangent to success and until such success had been achieved, considering it was more a diversion than anything else. Not this time, though. With Davey to think of, escape had to be regarded as a primary objective and not taken for granted.

Bane started to raise the trunk lid slowly, not worried about sight so much as sound. If the chauffeur picked up a squeak or a metallic tang, his eyes would be alerted and he would catch Bane at a most vulnerable time. As it was, Bane could hear the shuffling of thin pages, evidence the chauffeur was reading the newspaper he had bought at the drug store, its contents hopefully distracting enough to shield Bane’s exit.

Bane continued to push, even more slowly at the end when the danger of vibrations and sounds was greatest. Then came the most difficult part of all: lifting his 200-pound frame from the trunk without causing the car to sway and lean. Bane angled his body to the side and eased his right leg out first as a balance point. It was badly cramped, and as he stretched it down pain exploded through every tendon. He swallowed the agony with a grimace and finally found relief when his foot reached the floor. He shifted his weight a pound at a time, feeling the back of the car rise ever so slightly as more of his bulk left the trunk.

The chauffeur kept flipping the pages of his newspaper.

Finally Bane’s left foot joined his right on the floor and he was already sliding toward the driver’s side of the car and peering around the flank to find the chauffeur going to work on the second section.

Bane shuffled slowly toward the driver’s door, his shoes grazing the cement but never quite leaving it, seeming almost to float. Using the.45 the King had provided without a silencer was unthinkable, leaving him only his hands which was just fine. He would have to be fast, though. He couldn’t risk the attention a lengthy scuffle might bring.

Bane coiled his fingers, saw the chauffeur’s window was open. He was almost to the door. The man looked up at the instant Bane’s fingers jumped at him, too late to maneuver from his confined position. Bane’s hands locked on either side of his head, pulled and twisted. He felt the chauffeur’s neck snap, his head go limp and slump from Bane’s grasp. Bane opened the door and leaned further in to drag the chauffeur’s corpse out.

Then he saw the briefcase, it rested on the leather upholstery of the back seat bearing Colonel Chilgers’ initials. A plan came to Bane’s mind. His main problem all along had been how to infiltrate COBRA without drawing attention and without utilizing assault-type maneuvers. Chilgers had to be outwitted, not outgunned. But how? The briefcase gave him the answer.

He and the chauffeur were about the same size, and from a distance or at a passing glance he might be taken for the man, especially if Bane tipped the chauffer’s black cap low over his forehead. He would carry the briefcase noticeably before him, his intention obviously being to return it to the colonel who had left it behind in the car.

Wasting no further time, Bane pulled the dead chauffeur’s clothes from his body and stripped off his own. In three minutes he was dressed just as the dead man had been right up to the knot in his tie. The clothes made a surprisingly good fit, except for the pants which dragged a bit over his heels. After stowing the chauffeur’s body in the trunk, Bane tightened the black cap on his head and tilted it low; then he retrieved the briefcase from the back seat. He tucked his.45 beyond his left hip and jammed a pair of extra clips into one of the jacket’s pockets. Then he steadied himself with as deep a breath as he could manage and pressed the button on the side wall he guessed would provide him access into the complex.

The sliding part of the wall came up without so much as a creak, revealing a pair of long, wide corridors jutting out at right angles from each other. Sudden exposure to the fluorescent lighting stung Bane’s eyes but he ignored that and, holding the briefcase tightly, stepped out of the private garage bay to press the button just beyond the break in the wall. The door began its descent. His eyes adjusted to the brightness.

Bane had made it into COBRA.

He noticed the thick red lines painted across the walls like boundary markers and realized immediately he was in the high security section. All the better. Whatever he sought was contained somewhere down here. Still holding the briefcase clearly in front of him, Bane started to walk, toward the left because it felt correct. He saw a trio of white-coated scientific personnel moving toward him. Too late to do anything but keep going, not letting himself flinch or hesitate. He kept his feet steady, eyes straight; filling his mind with one thought:

I belong here… .

Tentativeness and hesitation were dead giveaways, the absolute worst enemies of an infiltrator. Bane recalled stories of a man who made a hobby out of mixing with celebrities at media events even though he had no right or reason to be there. The man just pretended that he belonged, believed it so strongly that no one ever challenged him.

The white-coated figures were almost upon him, two men with a woman between them. Bane maintained his pace, swung the briefcase forward and back just a bit faster to draw their eyes to it. He passed them with no problem at all, fighting down a deadly urge to turn around and look behind to see if they were still watching him.

Bane continued on down the corridor as it swung to the right. Immediately he found himself amidst more congestion, and he noticed for the first time, that all personnel wore red badges pinned to their lapels. He had the briefcase with Chilgers’ initials showcased, which was just as good; but for how much longer? Sooner or later someone would challenge him. The resulting confrontation might forfeit everything. Still, he had to press on.

Then Bane saw a man dressed in a green surgical outfit coming toward him, the man vaguely familiar. Bane felt a slight swell of panic as their eyes met and the man veered away into a room. Bane realized this was one of the men who had arrived in limousines that afternoon, and he ducked into the room which bordered the one the man had entered.

The room smelled heavily of alcohol, which made Bane realize at once that the corridors on this level bore no smell whatsoever other than the perfume or cologne of the workers he had passed. He glanced around him and realized he was in some sort of surgical scrub room; complete with lime green uniforms, piles of surgical masks, and at least five different kinds of soap. Trays of sterile instruments lined the counter that made up the left wall. Bane could see steam rising from a few of them which meant they had been prepared recently for an operation still to take place. Bane moved to the right wall which bordered the room the man from the limousine had entered. He quickly caught muffled voices and pressed his ear closer, focusing in.

“Then we’re all agreed on the procedure?” asked the first clear voice.

“So long as we can keep on schedule every step of the way,” answered another. “Frankly, I’m skeptical. My experience in brain surgery bears out that very seldom do operations finish without unexpected hitches popping up along the way.”

“We can deal with them,” the first voice came back.

“How old did you say the boy was?” A third voice.

“Fifteen,” answered the first.

“Well, his inner cranial development and temporal lobes shouldn’t prove much of a problem. And his x-rays show an extremely fit organ. Much of the time in brain surgery you have to deal with lots of swelling and that’s what slows you down.”

“Actually, I’m not expecting any hitches at all,” commented a fourth voice. “Gentlemen, all of us are experts at repairing damaged brains. Extracting a healthy one should prove child’s play.”

“Not when we have to keep it alive,” countered the second voice, “and that means not denying it oxygen for more than fifteen seconds.”

“Indeed,” added the first voice, “we can afford no cellular damage at all.”

“Where’s the anesthesiologist?”

“Prepping the boy now,” replied the first voice. “Hopefully shaving that bushy hair of his to get it out of our way.” Muffled laughter followed.

Bane felt himself go cold. He was suddenly aware that his hands were digging into the cabinet’s handles. The men in the next room, surgeons obviously, were discussing Davey Phelps. They were going to remove his brain for some hideous experiment! Bane’s rationality deserted him briefly. His hands came away from the cabinet clenched into fists. It was all he could do to restrain himself from charging into the adjoining room and killing the members of the surgical team. And he could do it, rather easily in fact. But he held back, letting the Winter Man guide him again. Killing the surgical team would accomplish nothing except to alert COBRA security to the presence of an intruder. Chilgers would know the complex had been infiltrated and Bane could never stop Vortex if the colonel was waiting for him. He had to keep surprise on his side.

In the adjoining room, the conversation droned on in terminology Bane didn’t understand.

He felt himself grow calm. His thinking became more precise. The surgery might turn out to be a blessing in one way: he couldn’t have asked for a better distraction to allow him free run of COBRA’s highest security areas. He might even be able to confront Chilgers on his own terms or perhaps find the center of Vortex and destroy it without so much as seeing the colonel. Yes …

Something in his mind balked, pulled back. He couldn’t risk sacrificing Davey to the emotionless men in the next room. There had to be a way to save the boy and destroy Vortex. Davey was as important to him as the world, and without one the other could not exist in his head. Again Bane’s mind roared ahead, impelling him to reach for a set of green surgical garb. He stripped off the chauffeur’s black suit and climbed into the greens, stuffing the discarded clothes into a pop-up wastebasket. He tied a lime cap over his head and tightened the surgical mask behind his ears. Inspecting himself in the mirror over the sink, he found that his face was virtually obscured. As a final touch he strapped the.45 to his calf with white adhesive tape. No place to store the extra clips, though. Twelve shots were all he was going to get.

His plan was simple: find the boy and move him to another room; a closet, a linen shed — anything. With luck, COBRA would be thrown into an atypical state of confusion and disarray which would allow him even more freedom of movement. A little more luck and the surgery would be delayed long enough for Bane to finish his business with Chilgers and then rescue Davey when the King’s plastic explosives provided the final diversion.

Bane stepped back into the corridor sure of his stride and purpose. His next task was to find Davey’s room or everything else would be superfluous. Asking someone would raise too many eyebrows and suspicions. Attention would be drawn to him and that he could afford least of all. He decided to use the process of elimination, first crossing off the entire corridor he had bypassed in favor of the one that had led him here. Yes, this was the biological experimentation wing of this complex where sensitive weapons of the gaseous or liquid variety were developed. If major surgery was to be performed, this section was already equipped for it. It made sense to Bane that Davey was very close by — but where?

Davey’s eyes twitched in his sleep. In the dream he’d seen Josh very near and strained to reach out to him.

Josh, I’m here! Help me! I’m here!

Bane felt himself being pulled down the corridor toward the last room on the right. His heart was pounding as he opened the door without hesitation to find two armed COBRA security men and one startled green-garbed doctor, the anesthesiologist obviously, staring at him from their positions over a bed. The security men had their hands on their guns. The anesthesiologist held a straight razor.

“Is he stable?” Bane asked, mask down, not bothering to regard anyone but the doctor as he strode forward into the room closing the door behind him.

The doctor moved the razor away from Davey’s head. The boy’s shaggy curls had already been snipped neatly off, exposing his forehead and ears. The razor would finish the job.

“Vitals are strong,” the doctor replied, eyeing him cautiously.

“Sedation?” Bane asked, grabbing the offensive.

“I was about to administer the final i.v. dose as soon as I finished the shaving,” the doctor responded more easily.

Since the surgical team was apparently composed of strangers, Bane knew the anesthesiologist had no reason to challenge his presence in the room.

Bane moved directly to Davey’s bedside and glanced at his closed eyes. “He’s looking good.”

“I’ve maintained sedation as low as possible to keep him strong.”

“Excellent,” Bane complimented.

The anesthesiologist looked away, was moving the razor back toward Davey’s head when Bane acted, ramming his elbow into the doctor’s solar plexus and then up against the underside of his chin, in the same instant smashing down hard on the arm holding the razor. It clanged to the floor. The first security guard was still fumbling for his pistol when Bane grabbed a syringe from a tray near Davey’s bed and jabbed it right into his windpipe, pressing the plunger. The man’s eyeballs bulged as his hands groped for the needle, finding it only after consciousness had been stripped from him with death soon to follow.

The second guard wasted no time going for his gun. He went for Bane instead. Bane felt a set of powerful arms wrap about his head and neck in a Green Beret hold that brought sure, quick death. Bane twisted sideways and kept the second guard moving, stopping his grasp from becoming firm. The guard’s timing was thrown off and he toppled headlong over Bane’s shoulder, crashing hard against the floor yet lunging, meanwhile, toward the panic button at the bedside, and thereby exposing his entire neck at a strange angle. Bane reached his head before he reached the button. Bane threw all of his force into the blow, jamming the second guard’s head down so his throat mashed against the bed frame’s lowest railing. Bane felt the cartilage crack and give way, and then the neck went totally limp and became puttylike in his hands. He rolled the man over and glanced into a pair of eyes that would never close again.

Bane pulled himself to his feet, using the handrail for support, and found his eyes meeting Davey’s which had suddenly opened full and sure. They widened briefly, looking behind Bane’s shoulder, when something crashed into the back of Bane’s skull.

There were two more blasts to the back of his head before he felt himself slipping toward the floor. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the anesthesiologist he had neglected to finish off sweeping something from the tile. Bane realized it was the razor in time to deflect the first blow and redirect the second so that it whipped across the doctor’s throat, splitting it in two. The man’s fingers clawed the air as he crumbled backward, making a gagging sound.

Bane rose again to face Davey. The boy’s eyes struggled to stay open, fighting off the sedation Bane figured had been employed to neutralize his power. He found Davey’s hand and squeezed it.

“Can you hear me?”

The boy managed the semblance of a nod.

“I’m going to get you out of here. Just hang on.”

The boy nodded again, this time forming the shadow of a grateful smile with his lips.

Bane went to work. First the three bodies had to be disposed of, hidden for the time being, starting with the anesthesiologist’s because the blood from the slash in his throat was just reaching the floor. Bane dragged him by the shoulders into the bathroom and managed to stuff one of the guards in there as well. The second guard he jammed into the room’s only closet. That they would be discovered after it became known the boy was missing was inevitable. Chilgers would then know beyond any doubt that COBRA had been infiltrated. For now, though, Bane needed to steal all the time he could. The hope of avoiding violence was gone, so Bane directed his thoughts toward the next step.

The problem at this point was to get Davey out of the room, to somewhere that would serve as a hiding place while Bane completed his other appointed task. Then he would return and collect the boy, timing his escape to coincide with the King’s explosive diversion and the confusion that resulted. Wasting no time, Bane unhitched the bed railings and let the wings down, pulling the dolly the anesthesiologist must have brought in up close to move Davey onto it. The boy’s eyes flashed a bit brighter. If only he could come round fully, if only he could use the power …

Bane realized he was looking at the boy as a potential weapon just as Chilgers must have, instead of the victim that he was. He shook off the lapse and squeezed the boy’s hand again, tighter as if to apologize for his thoughts.

Davey’s eyes found his and seemed to say he understood.

The stare brought a shudder to Bane’s gut.

He looked at me and he knew, knew everything… .

Bane pushed the thought aside. Gradually he eased the boy’s body off the bed and onto the white sheet lining of the dolly, its wheels now locked into place to prevent motion. An extra surgical cap lay on the bedside tray and Bane tucked it tight around Davey’s head to hide what remained of his hair. He would steer the dolly through the corridor, pretending to be on his way to the operating room. Before anyone could question him, Davey would be hidden and Bane would be on to the next stage of his plan: destroying Vortex.

He had unhitched the wheels and started to swing the dolly around when the door opened suddenly.

“What happened to the guards?” asked Dr. Teke.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Bane pushed back his fear an instant before it showed on his features. He recognized the bald man standing in the doorway, surgical mask dangling around his throat, clearly from Janie’s picture.

“I sent them for another dolly,” he said, not hesitating, realizing that Teke assumed he was the anesthesiologist.

“Well, this one will have to do. The colonel wants us to get started immediately.”

“In that case …”

“Is the boy under?”

Bane knew he couldn’t hedge in the slightest if his deception, born of fortune, was to last. He recalled the dead anesthesiologist’s intentions.

“I’ve just administered the final i.v. dose,” he said.

“The gas is ready in the O.R.?”

Bane just nodded.

Teke regarded him only briefly as he moved across the room, raising his surgical mask. Two orderlies followed in his wake, finishing the job of swinging the dolly for the door. Davey’s eyes sought out Bane’s briefly and then surrendered as the orderlies started to wheel him from the room.

Bane felt Teke draw up even with him, his bulbous head dripping rivulets of sweat. Only the dim light was saving him from recognition, Bane reckoned, but what would he do under the bright fluorescent lighting promised in the operating room? He had to take the risk that Teke, the only one present who might recognize him, would keep his attention focused on Davey. It would be to his great advantage that the surgeons who had arrived in the limousines were all relative strangers to each other and would have little way of knowing which faces belonged and which didn’t, especially beneath surgical masks. Bane considered making his move now, before they reached the operating room, but only briefly. The corridors were crowded, with staff and security personnel. His only hope lay in going along with the charade, even into the O.R. Except the charade at best could last only until one of the surgeons removed Davey’s lime surgical cap and saw his head still layered with hair. Bane had no way of knowing how far into the procedure that would happen.

Then, as he turned with Teke to follow the dolly out of the room, Bane noticed the black shoe of one of the dead security guards sticking out from the closet.

Teke’s eyes swept in that direction.

“I had a little trouble with the monitoring equipment in the O.R.,” Bane said suddenly, hoping the words sounded both professional and legitimate.

Teke’s eyes turned toward him, away from the closet. “Remedied, I trust.”

Bane shrugged, smothered a sigh of relief. “I’ll make do,” he said, setting up possible delays in the O.R.

He followed Teke out of the room, moving in two steps behind the dolly. He felt his heart flutter. His whole plan was finished, ruined. They had the boy and, worse, they had him. He was a prisoner of his own deception.

However, even as Bane moved down the corridor, a new plan was forming in his mind. He would have to time things perfectly and take full advantage of where the eyes of the others in the room were expected to be, but that was nothing new for the Winter Man. As anesthesiologist he was responsible for putting the boy out … or not putting him out. The levels of the anesthetic were his to control. He could see Davey’s eyes coming slowly back to life. If he held back more sedation long enough, the boy would regain his senses and with them would come his power. But would it be in time?

Suddenly the thought of using the boy as a weapon didn’t bother Bane.

He moved with the dolly in Teke’s shadow down the corridor toward the O.R. The rooms and people he passed became a blur. He followed Teke into the scrub room where they joined the rest of the team for a final washing.

“Are we ready, Doctor?”

Bane turned from his sink toward the man raising the question from the doorway and found himself looking directly into the cold cat’s eyes of Col. Walter Chilgers. His surgical mask was in place, but for a horrifying instant he thought Chilgers was looking at him with more than passive interest before he realized the colonel’s stare was fixed on Teke who stood just to Bane’s right.

“Right on schedule, Colonel.”

“Splendid. Then I’ll expect no complications.”

“There shouldn’t be any. Our surgical team has studied the case from all possible angles. Every step we’re about to perform has been planned to the letter.”

“I’ll watch as much of the process as I can from the viewing gallery.”

“We’ll try to give you a good show.”

Teke dried his hands. Bane did likewise, fearful of committing any action anomalous to standard surgical procedures. Just observe and follow, he told himself, observe and follow….

The next half hour of final prepping under the white hot lights of the operating room became a blur for him, one minute running into the next. He kept his eyes from meeting those of the others involved for fear the uncertainty he felt might betray him. His knowledge of this kind of medicine was limited to watching medics in the field and the emergency procedures he had learned himself. Nothing in his past even came close to preparing him to play the role of a full-fledged anesthesiologist in a sensitive brain operation. His only choice was to continue going through as many of the motions as possible. Past observation had shown him that no member of the surgical team ever watched the actions of the anesthesiologist closely during an operation. The more complex the surgery, the less they watched. They would, though, regularly ask for a reading on vitals, which meant Bane had to familiarize himself with the digital and wave levels curving all about the machines surrounding him. With any luck, the word “stable” was all he’d have to use until he grasped the complexities of the machines.

Bane’s chair was located on Davey’s right side, even with the boy’s forearm. Ordinarily, the anesthesiologist sat directly behind the patient, but in brain operations that was clearly the domain of the surgeons. He went through the motions of aiding the lab technicians to attach the wires that would monitor the boy’s vital signs and then set about studying the red, green, or white read-outs which flashed across an array of screens in constant motion behind his shoulder. It all looked like a bizarre electronic dance to Bane, and if he had still possessed the capacity he might have smiled beneath his surgical mask.

He stole a quick glance above him and caught a glimpse of Colonel Chilgers in the observation gallery, a semicircle lined with chairs and enclosed by thick, soundproof glass. Sensitive microphones poked out from its two near corners making the colonel and everyone else up there privy to any discussion the surgeons might have.

Thoughts of Chilgers made Bane’s right hand shift involuntarily down to his left calf where the.45 was strapped. The possibility that the slight bulge might be spotted never occurred to him. Nor did the possibility that the three bodies he had hidden in Davey’s room might be discovered soon. There was too much going on inside COBRA at this point for eyes to notice either.

Of more concern to him was how to go about creating the illusion he was continuously feeding Davey anesthetic when, in reality, he was doing his utmost to revive him. Bane had virtually no idea how vital signs were specifically affected by sedation. The wrong signs would be a dead giveaway to the surgical team that something was wrong.

Stable …

The word returned to him. The purpose of anesthesia was to guard against any unwarranted flux in bodily functions. All Bane had to do was keep Davey’s read-outs just as they were now, perhaps a bit lower, anything but the rise that would come as the boy slowly regained full consciousness of the scene around him. But how?

Bane’s fingers touched Davey’s forearm.

Stay calm, he thought as hard as he could, stay totally calm.

For a brief instant, noticeable only to Bane, the pulse and heartbeat waves rose into the highest grids on their screens. Davey had heard his thoughts, understood. All his vital signs stabilized with almost chilling suddenness. Then one of the lab technicians was handing Bane the black rubber mask that would pump anesthetic gas from the tank into the boy’s lungs. Bane fastened it around the back of Davey’s neck.

Don’t react, he thought even harder than before. Stay calm.

The needles, waves, and numbers wavered not at all.

“Should I start him at two?” the technician was asking him.

Bane realized that the operation was finally about to begin. A terrifying combination of precise surgical equipment and tools that might have come from a carpenter’s box was wheeled over on a cart to the surgeon who would perform the initial incisions and removed the skull bone enclosing the boy’s brain. To keep the skull area sterile, Bane concluded, the flesh would not be exposed until the last moments before that initial incision was made, thus securing the deception Davey’s hair would otherwise have given away and perhaps buying Bane the time he needed.

“Ready to begin gas flow at level two on your mark,” the lab technician was saying to him.

Bane held the thick rubber tubing which ran from the tank under the table, testing its strength. He tried to pinch it together, hoping to close off most of the flow, but found it was too strong to hold in any worthwhile position for very long without being noticed. He thought of readjusting the mask so that the anesthetic would be steered away from Davey’s nose and mouth, but he couldn’t think of a way to make such an obvious medical error without attracting immediate attention. How, then, was he going to keep the boy from losing consciousness again?

The answer lay before him, at eye level on the surgeon’s tray.

“You have my mark,” Bane told the lab technician.

And in the fleeting instant all eyes were drawn to the vitals indicators above his shoulder, he swept a scalpel off the tray, moving it immediately toward the tubing still grasped beneath the operating table.

The surgeon seated directly behind Davey pulled a similar scalpel from the tray and tested its weight. Bane figured he was going to use it for cutting back the scalp prior to removing the skull dome.

“Let me know when he’s under,” he said to Bane and Bane knew at once the deception would have to end shortly one way or another because the surgeon’s hands had gone to Davey’s lime cap.

Bane made a quick, neat slice in the rubber tubing, spilling the anesthetic gas into the room’s air and wondering if its effects or smell would be immediately noticeable. He took in several deep breaths, found no trace of gas in the air.

From the observation area, a motion that seemed somehow out of place brought Colonel Chilgers to his feet. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was, only the general direction from which it came: the anesthesiologist’s chair.

The surgeon behind Davey was ready to strip off the boy’s cap and start in with his scalpel, awaiting word from Bane that the boy was under and his flesh could be sliced. Davey was starting to come round; Bane could feel it. In spite of the fact that he must have known where he was now and what was about to happen to him, the levels of his vitals remained stable. Still, Bane was waiting too long. The patience of the surgical team was starting to wane. Soon they’d know something was wrong. Bane started to reach slowly for his pistol.

I won’t let you down, Davey, I won’t let you down …

Chilgers’ eyes were locked on the anesthesiologist. Something about the man seemed all wrong, out of place. He saw the man’s hand sneaking toward his ankle and knew then this was a stranger, an intruder. He smothered thoughts of how the man had gotten in until later.

“He’s under,” Bane told the surgeon, who steadied himself with a deep breath and started peeling Davey’s surgical cap back, feeling knots of hair beneath it.

“What the hell? …”

The boy’s vitals began to fluctuate, red lines dancing crazily on the monitoring grids.

Chilgers moved his lips to the intercom which connected him with the four guards on duty outside the O.R. door.

“The anesthesiologist!” he screamed. “Take him! Take him!” Then, into another speaker to the O.R. “Stop the operation! Stop the operation!”

The guards started through the door.

Bane ripped the.45 free of his leg. His first three shots took out the largest of the overhead lights, casting the room in a dull, shadow-dominated haze. The four guards had drawn their guns quickly and surely as they stormed into the room, but the haze made them hesitate. All the green-garbed figures scurrying away or reeling back from the table in fearful confusion looked the same. Which was the anesthesiologist?

For Bane, the situation was far simpler. There were only four uniforms to consider and he dropped each one with a single bullet. Then, as reinforcements rushed for the doorway, he shot out the rest of the room’s lights and pulled Davey from the table, stripping the tubes and wires from him.

“Don’t shoot!” Chilgers screamed into the intercom connecting him with the blackened room below. “I need the boy alive! I need the boy alive!” His fingers scraped against the tile walls for the switch that would activate the emergency lighting. To allow for optimum viewing of the operation, all lights had been left off in the gallery and now the resulting darkness slowed Chilgers’ progress, obscured the familiar surroundings.

Below, chaos reigned in the O.R. as more guards swept in and green-garbed surgical team members scurried for the door in panic. Bane pulled Davey tighter to him, resigned to his failure and pondering the pain he could save the boy by killing him mercifully now. The boy hadn’t awakened enough to use his power, so there would be two bullets: one for Davey and one for himself.

Chilgers located the button, pressed it. A measure of the operating room’s lighting came back, certainly enough for the guards to locate the two figures huddled beneath the table. Bane steadied the.45, closed his eyes to the horrible necessity of firing it two more times.

Davey made The Chill.

Bane felt something, a blast of cold on a hot summer’s day. The hair on his arms pricked up, stood on edge, whipped about as gooseflesh sprouted outward.

Oh my God, he thought, it’s happening… .

The thick glass in front of the observation area shattered outward, huge shards and slivers becoming deadly projectiles that rained down with blinding force. Bane shut his eyes to the carnage as the bodies of guards and members of the operating team became bloody pincushions, barely resembling the beings they had been just seconds before. Severed limbs and heads blasted against the walls with sickening force. The fury spared no one. Over in ten seconds at most, it left behind a scarlet pool which dripped, ran, spread everywhere.

Davey wasn’t finished yet.

He pushed for The Chill again and all of COBRA was plunged into total darkness, broken after three seconds by the sparsely located battery-powered emergency lights. An ear-piercing alarm began to sound every other second, adding to the chaos.

In the naked light of the operating room, Bane saw Davey’s eyes squint, his temples throb. He reached over to pull him from under the table and found the touch of his flesh to be that of a live, exposed wire. He yanked his fingers away convinced they were singed, imagining almost he could smell his own burnt, smoldering flesh.

Bane shook himself from the spell, grabbed Davey again and yanked hard. The boy gave way, clung to him with one arm. There was a laundry chute in the far right corner and together they crawled through the blood toward it. More guards would be coming soon and Chilgers would certainly give a kill order now, meaning no time could be wasted.

Bane pushed Davey into the chute, then plunged in after him, the drop seeming to last forever.

The impact from the blast had thrown Chilgers off his feet into the back wall of the observation gallery. He had felt the sudden energy surge stand his neck hairs on end an instant before the glass disintegrated and knew in that same instant he had been a fool not to have had the boy killed at the first sign of danger.

Chilgers knew now the invader was Bane, knew somehow he had escaped from the army sent after him to the Poconos. The Winter Man was the only one capable of damaging his plans so thoroughly … but not completely. Even the Winter Man couldn’t stop him from triggering the final stage of Vortex at this point.

The regular screeching wail of the alarm kept Chilgers from blacking out into an oblivion that would have doomed Vortex to failure. He was dazed all right and the back of his neck was numb with pain. But he still found the reserve strength to push himself from the floor and, using the wall for support at the start, to find his way into the corridor.

No ordinary man could pose a threat to the vast power of COBRA. Bane, however, was no ordinary man, and now he had the boy with him who was anything but ordinary as well. All told, Chilgers felt threatened for the first time in longer than he cared to remember. His whole professional life had been built around avoiding moments like this, moments when the cold grip of failure fights to grab hold as you writhe and squirm to twist away from it.

The corridors looked like a darkened, fuzzy labyrinth to Chilgers’ throbbing eyes. He knew he had to get to the console in his office to trigger a Red Flag alert at Bunker 17 and change the face of civilization. He’d had the equipment set up there and rigged through the main computer banks on underground level four so the moment of this supreme accomplishment could take place in the same solitude in which all the great moments of his life had occurred.

Chilgers was still a soldier, not as physically capable as he’d been years before but mentally as strong as ever. He fought to clear his mind. The corridors became sharp again, his sense of direction was restored. Breathing heavily, he stepped up his pace and focused his thoughts on the button he would be pressing in a matter of minutes.

Bane felt Davey cling to him as they moved away from the laundry chute. The boy sobbed and moaned alternately, wrapping his arms tightly around Bane’s shoulders.

“I had to do it! I didn’t mean to hurt them so much but I can’t control it! I can’t control it!”

Davey smothered his head against Bane’s chest and the Winter Man held him, held him like he’d never let go. His green surgical outfit was caked with drying blood, as were the baggy white pants and shirt the boy was dressed in. Bane was glad Davey had collapsed against him because it prevented the boy from seeing the horror still in his eyes. Bane recalled the sensation of watching the boy “make” the Twin Bear turn his knife on himself in the New York hotel room. That had been eerie, frightening. What he had witnessed in the O.R. just minutes before was a hundred times more potent, a power stretching beyond the scope of human comprehension.

The emergency alarm continued to wail.

Chilgers had wanted Davey’s brain as a weapon, perhaps to create a thousand more like him. Now Bane could understand why.

The boy hugged him tighter.

“It hurts!” Davey’s feet started to slip. “My head! Oh God, my head! They made me use The Chill when I didn’t want to. They hurt me when I wouldn’t. It hurt me bad, so bad, but they didn’t care. They just kept making me use The Chill.” The boy pulled away, then looked up, eyes wide with fear and uncertainty. “I didn’t mean to kill all those people. I didn’t!”

“I know,” Bane said.

“The pain won’t stop! Why won’t the pain stop!”

Bane placed one arm across Davey’s shoulders. “Let go, Davey, let go. It’s all right now. Just let go.”

The boy went limp against him. The emergency alarm stopped screaming. The regular overhead lighting snapped back on. At the end of the corridor, Bane saw an elevator, a second elevator in fact because one also rested directly in front of the laundry chute.

Strange, Bane thought, but maybe not so strange. Yes, in the event of an emergency Chilgers would want potential escape routes both up … and down. The second elevator must be a direct route to and from his office where the final activating device of Vortex had to be located! There would be a way to get back to ground level from here somehow, a hidden stairwell or something. But Bane cared nothing for that. The elevator was all he needed.

“Come on,” he said to Davey, already leading him toward it.

The boy’s feet squeaked against the linoleum floor, Bane realizing for the first time they were bare. Bane reached the elevator and pressed the button. Gears ground above.

Come on! Come on!

“What I saw,” Davey said suddenly, “all the death The Vibes showed me. It’s gonna happen. We can’t stop it, can we?”

Bane couldn’t find an answer for him, couldn’t find any words at all. He heard the elevator floating down, locking into place. Slowly its doors slid open.

Chilgers reached his office and locked the door behind him. That Bane was nearby and closing, he didn’t doubt for an instant. But time was on the colonel’s side now. One quick motion with his wrist was all that remained to set the final stage of Vortex into operation.

Chilgers hurried over to what looked like an unstocked dry bar in the corner of his office, aware suddenly that his private elevator was in motion. He knew it was Bane but didn’t care; there was nothing the Winter Man could do to stop him now.

Chilgers flipped a switch on the side of the dry bar. The top gave way to a square console no larger than a portable typewriter and decorated with a series of lights and buttons, all surrounding a large red button the size of a silver dollar in the center.

Chilgers hit five switches below the red button and five above it, waited.

The elevator’s gears whined to a halt.

The lights on the console flashed green.

The elevator’s doors started to open.

Chilgers moved his finger deliberately for the red button in the console’s center.

Bane had the.45 out and aimed in the same motion. The gun’s roar reverberated in the small compartment and stung his ears.

Chilgers’ finger had made contact with the trigger button at the instant the bullet grazed his wrist and spun him around. His balance was gone and he was falling but the red button was still there and he reached for it, as the floor was pulled out from under him and a second bullet whizzed past his ear.

The hammer of the.45 clicked on an empty chamber. Bane rushed across the room and tackled Chilgers low, then looked back at the console and saw the red button in the center was … gone.

No, not gone. Just pushed down, depressed.

Bane lunged toward the console, tried to unjam the button as if that would somehow erase the signal already sent to a missile complex in Montana where the end of the world was about to begin.

Chapter Thirty-eight

Maj. Christian Teare was maintaining his vigil in Bunker 17’s Command Center when the signal for Red Flag alert came through.

“Well, Jesus H. Christ …”

The terminal operator was too caught up in the frenzied pattern of computer signals flashing across his screen to hear him. Automatically, all lights in the bunker changed to a dull red, triggered by the SAFE interceptor. A chiming alarm sounded for five seconds, then stopped.

“Get me confirmation from base,” Teare ordered the nervous operator, knowing the command was futile.

The man punched out a series of instructions on his keyboard and waited for a response. When it came, he turned slowly to Teare.

“Confirmation established, sir.”

“In a rat’s ass,” Teare muttered, waiting for Heath to arrive from the Com-link center where he was hopefully tracing the origin of the signal order down.

Out of frustration, Teare reached over his shoulder and grabbed the black receiver that would, under normal conditions, have connected him directly with NORAD, lifting it to his ear slowly as though to pray for a tone.

“Shit!” he bellowed when none came.

On the board which made up Com-center’s entire rear wall, all monitored systems of Bunker 17 flashed from red to yellow and finally to green. Final missile launching checks were being made. The Disco was now shut off from the entire world. Twenty-eight seconds had passed since the triggering of Red Flag.

“Launching sequence will commence in one minute,” droned the computer-keyed monotone voice. “Fifty-five seconds …”

Looks like we’re gonna break our own record, Teare reflected ironically.

Captain Heath rushed through the Command Center’s sliding doors, sweat caking his face and eyes bulging. Teare grabbed him at the shoulders when he was halfway across the room.

“The signal!” Heath managed, struggling for breath. “It came from San Diego! Red Flag was triggered from San Diego!”

“COBRA!” Teare screamed. “Jesus shit, it was COBRA all along!” Then, “There’s got to be some goddamned way to call this thing off! It didn’t come from Colorado or Washington! It ain’t legitimate!”

“Except the computers don’t know the difference,” Heath said rapidly. “The SAFE system overrides all manual orders. The Disco’s sealed. We won’t have enough time to break through. Red Flag means total commitment.” Heath paused. “World War III.”

“Launching sequence will commence in thirty-five seconds….”

“We’ll see about that….”

Teare sped out of Command Center with Heath on his heels.

“There’s nothing you can do!” the captain insisted.

“There’s plenty,” Teare shot back, pulling a square-shaped key from around his neck.

“What the—”

“Launching sequence will commence in thirty seconds….”

“NORAD don’t exactly trust their machines one hundred percent, Cap. This key’ll give me access into the Disco and allow me to override all previous launch procedures right up to the final button,” Teare said, rounding another corner.

“Then why didn’t you use it before?” Heath shouted from just behind him.

“Red Flag had to be in effect. Don’t work before.”

“Launching sequence will commence in twenty-five seconds….”

In the Disco, Kate T. sat in the center console as the queen. At the twenty-second-to-launch mark, she removed a key exactly like Christian Teare’s from her neck. The men sitting on either side of her followed suit. Behind her she knew twelve wide-eyed men and women were monitoring the Missile Status boards, two on each to ensure against error. She could not look at them because at this point her eyes had to stay locked forward on her console. Years of training had taught her the board was the only thing that mattered now, her entire life. But the years of training could do nothing about the fluttering of her heart. She still clung to the hope that this was another drill, though somewhere down not so deep she knew it wasn’t. There were thirty-six MX missiles in the silos and ultimately it would be her key that fired them. No escaping that.

“Launching sequence will commence in fifteen seconds….”

“We have commencement of primary ignition,” reported the man on Kate T.’s right.

Before her, on the main terminal board which charted the progress of the missiles once they were fired, thirty-six lights flashed white in a perfect circle like a birthday cake’s candles.

“Board shows all systems go, all lights green,” announced the man on her left.

“Terminal shows all systems go, all lights green,” followed his counterpart on the right.

The six voices from behind her were quick to pick up the act.

“Silos one to six, all systems check.”

“Silos seven to twelve, all systems check.”

“Silos thirteen to eighteen, all systems check.”

“Silos nineteen to twenty-four, all systems check.”

“Silos twenty-five to thirty, all systems check.”

“Silos thirty-one to thirty-six, all systems check.”

“Launching sequence will commence in ten seconds, nine, eight, seven….”

Maj. Christian Teare reached the heavy Disco door with his key in one hand and his ID in the other. He shoved the plastic card into the slot tailored for it and counted the long instant it took for a key lock to pop out from the adjacent wall.

“Come on, come on,” he urged, jamming his key home finally with a trembling hand.

“Launching sequence commences now.” Kate T. spoke with her breath hot in her throat, eyes locked to her console. “Computer attack sequence Plan D for David, A for Adam, D for Daniel.”

“Confirmed,” from her right. “Confirmed,” from her left. “Commence final launch procedures.” The two men followed her lead by jamming their keys into their console activators and then waited for system activation while the Disco queen punched in the personal code for the hour. The red trigger button on the center of her console popped up. The light above it flashed green.

In the silos, thirty-six MX missiles roared and shook from the strain of being held back, like eager race horses at the starting gate. Exhaust fumes poured out of their bottoms with increasing force until the observation glass of each was heated to temperatures exceeding a thousand degrees. The on-duty personnel donned their protective goggles which would protect them until the blast screens lowered automatically at launch.

Maj. Christian Teare turned his key from left to right and the Disco door, four feet of solid steel, slid open.

Kate Tullman’s finger had hesitated for an instant on the trigger button. But then training had taken over, superseded reason, and determined her action.

“No!” Christian Teare screamed, the only word he had time for before Kate Tullman pressed the button.

Bunker 17 trembled ever so sightly with the vibrations as thirty-six missiles, each packing ten warheads, exploded from their silos and rocketed into the sky, white blurs climbing for the clouds.

Christian Teare didn’t feel that sensation or any other. His eyes darted feverishly from Kate T.’s console to the main board which now projected the thirty-six white lights beginning their outward path.

“Trigger emergency override system,” he ordered Kate Tullman.

She looked at him awkwardly, afraid she had made a horrible mistake and wondering how it could be her fault. This was totally against procedure. The commander didn’t belong in here, no one did. But the same feeling that had prevented the on-duty armed guards from shooting the apparent intruder now made Kate Tullman respond to him.

“Missiles already out of range for override, Commander.”

“Tie in primary fail-safe system.”

Kate T. hit a flashing button. The white lights on the main terminal board kept rising.

“Negative response, Commander. Primary failsafe system inoperative.” Then she looked up at him. “The signal’s been jammed.”

Major Teare leaned over Kate’s right shoulder. “Then we’ll just have to blast those fuckers outta the sky.” He turned briefly toward Heath. “What’s a safe destruct distance, Cap?”

“Six thousand feet, Major.”

Teare jammed his square key into a hidden slot underneath the center console table and turned it until a black button popped up beside the red one the Disco queen had pressed to launch the missiles.

“Fuck you, COBRA,” he whispered. “NORAD don’t tell you all its secrets.” He cocked his head to the rear. “Give me a distance update on those missiles and keep ’em coming, son.”

“Three thousand five hundred,” came a voice from behind him. “Course steady. Four thousand feet….”

Teare moved his massive index finger to the black destruct button, his eyes fixed on the board displaying the missiles’ track. “I think I’m gonna pay me a personal visit to those bastards in San Diego….”

“Four thousand five hundred … five thousand.”

Teare got ready to push.

“Five thousand five hundred feet …”

Teare’s finger started to move, eyes locked on the display board.

“Six thou—”

“What the blue blazin’ fuck? …”

The white lights on the main terminal board, all thirty-six of them, went out before Teare could press the destruct button. The major did a double take, blinked rapidly, checked around the Disco to make sure he wasn’t losing his mind and found a host of faces as dumbstruck as his own watching the impossible in silence.

Thirty-six MX missiles had simply disappeared.

The triggering of the emergency alarm had brought the NORAD commander down to the main operations room in the Cheyenne Mountains of Colorado with his uniform jacket only half buttoned.

“We’ve detected a launch, sir,” the shift chief yelled to him as he descended the stairs, eyes searching about the eight screens on the massive blackened wall before him.

“The Russians? Oh Christ, what grid?”

The shift chief hesitated. “Not the Russians, sir, it was … us. Our launch, that is.”

“What?”

“Our MX installation in Montana.”

“Bunker 17? That’s impossible. The drill was canceled. I’m sure that—” The NORAD commander’s eyes finally found the screen monitoring the flight of the thirty-six missiles. “My God … Did we get confirmation on this?”

“Negative. All communications with the installation have shut down. But confidence of the launch is high. In fact—”

The shift chief’s words were broken off by a collective lost breath spreading through the operations room. On the center board, the computer-enhanced lines following the missiles’ path weren’t there anymore, which meant the missiles weren’t either.

But the commander’s eyes stayed on the board as if they were. “Better get me the President on the blower, Chief.”

The receiver felt extremely heavy in Secretary of Defense Brandenberg’s hand. The President’s call on the red line had awakened him from a sound sleep. He could only hope he was still dreaming.

“Disappeared?” he wondered.

“That’s the word from NORAD,” the President told him.

“Computer foul-up perhaps.”

“The only foul-up was on our part for not realizing Chilgers had something up his sleeve with Project Placebo. Those missiles launched all right.”

“What does Bunker 17 say?”

“Nothing. We’ve been unable to raise the base. Total communications blackout.”

“But I spoke with them this afternoon…. Good God, they must have been infiltrated!”

“Not infiltrated, George, fooled by Chilgers just as we were.” The President paused, collected his thoughts, “Wentworth’s report said this whole thing started with a disappearing 727.”

“Which later came back.”

“And so will those missiles when they reach their detonation points … over Russia.”

“Have the Soviets contacted us?”

The President nodded. “They wanted to check on the nature of a suspected launch their satellites picked up and then lost. We told them we had a blowout in some of our silos. I think they bought it. They’ll know the truth in twenty minutes anyway. We all will.”

“World War III,” muttered Brandenberg. “Or worse.”

The sudden return to normal lighting stung King Cong’s eyes. He finished setting the tenth timing device and moved on to place the final five charges. For the past fifteen minutes, he’d moved about the lower and upper levels of COBRA as if he belonged and in all the confusion no one had challenged him. Strangely, his biggest problem hadn’t been subduing the guards after cutting his way through the fence into the compound, but finding one large enough. As it was, the guard whose uniform he appropriated was still four inches shorter in the legs. The dogs hadn’t been a problem either; they’d just made a lot of noise he had quickly silenced with ease.

He set the small, but extremely potent, explosives at the weakest structural points of the building. The King had done lots of demolition work behind North Korean lines years before, and although the technical particulars eluded him, he had gained an instinctive awareness of the best places to blow if you wanted to bring a structure down. Not that he possessed any illusions that fifteen charges could do that to COBRA. If properly placed, though, they could virtually shut the complex down, wreaking havoc everywhere and creating a diversion for Josh’s escape.

The return of the lights would bring a return to relative normalcy. Take away their hundred-watt bulbs and the bastards were basically helpless. The King loved the dark and working in it once again had been a pleasure. Now he would have to work faster and keep on the move. Five more to go and then he’d be on his way out of the building to watch the fireworks from the nearby hill. And, hell, if Josh didn’t come out, then he’d go in after him.

The King snaked down the corridors as if they were the streets of Harlem. People were passing him from both directions now and he just acted as if he were doing what he was supposed to. Of course, if any of them ventured too close he was ready for that too, even hoped for it — but not until the final charges were set.

He felt more alive than he had in years. Death and destruction were in his blood. Take them away for too long and a kind of anemia resulted. The King knew his veins were pumped full again.

He placed the twelfth charge and set the timer for five seconds after the last. All the explosives had been placed, the first timed to go off at midnight sharp, twenty minutes away.

Long time, the King figured.

Chapter Thirty-nine

“I should kill you right now.”

Chilgers looked up at Bane from behind his desk, clutching his still numb wrist.

“Go ahead, Mr. Bane,” he said. “My work is done. In twenty minutes the world will move on to a new and brighter course.”

“In twenty minutes the world is gonna break up all around us.”

Chilgers glanced away from him, back toward the elevator where Davey stood trembling slightly. “You destroyed the next stage of my operation. Pity really. A total waste.”

Bane lunged over the desk, grabbed Chilgers by the lapels. “Bring those missiles back, you bastard! Don’t you understand what’s about to happen, what you’re about to cause?”

The colonel remained totally calm. “Fully, Mr. Bane.”

Bane tossed him back into his chair.

“There’s no way those missiles can be recalled now,” Chilgers went on. “Why, for all intents and purposes they don’t even exist anymore. You spoke to Von Goss and I’m sure your able mind has filled in any holes he might have left.”

“And what’s going to fill the hole left when the Earth gets scrambled into cosmic dust?”

“There will be no such holes, Mr. Bane. Instead there will be three hundred and sixty considerably smaller ones all centered in the Soviet Union. I dare say their retaliatory capabilities will be rendered utterly helpless. With no hope of regaining their advantage, I’m expecting an unconditional surrender.”

“If there’s anyone left to surrender to …”

Chilgers frowned. “More of that? I must say, you disappoint me, Mr. Bane. You must think me a total fool to proceed with an operation that would, to use your words, ‘scramble the Earth.’ I didn’t ignore Metzencroy’s report, nor did I disregard it. Other scientists on my staff totally refuted his theory.”

“You didn’t speak to Von Goss.”

“Ah, the old recluse who spent his last day in a research lab fifteen years ago. Of course, I had to have him eliminated as well. He became a nuisance.”

“A nuisance who understood the forces you’re unleashing.”

“I weighed the opinions of Metzencroy — and accordingly Von Goss — against the considered opinions of half a dozen other experts, all of whom insisted their theory was completely out of hand.”

Bane leaned forward over the desk. “But none of them worked directly with Einstein forty years ago. None of them possessed the kind of intuitive insight that could only be gained from that kind of direct experience.”

Chilgers checked his watch. “Eighteen minutes, Mr. Bane, eighteen minutes until a new balance of power is set forth in the world. And even if I could recall the missiles, I hardly think this intuitive insight you speak of would be reason to do so. You’re not a scientist, Mr. Bane, and even allowing for your newfound knowledge, can you honestly tell me that you know beyond a shadow of doubt that Vortex will end in the obliteration of our planet?”

Bane said nothing.

“Of course you can’t, because you don’t know. Nobody knows. Certainly the possibility exists but in the realm we have entered, all possibilities exist. You see, scientists know absolutely nothing. They merely perceive and make deductions, feed data if you will for the rest of us to base our decisions on. Scientists are totally incapable of activating anything. Given the responsibility, they would argue forever about the right approach and the potential ramifications. Science is too important to be left to the scientists, Mr. Bane. Decisions must be left to the military, men who have built their lives around making them. Science is a tool for us, nothing more.”

“Speaking for the Pentagon now, Chilgers?”

“Their thoughts, not their words.”

“You’re really willing to risk destroying the world, aren’t you?”

“If the risk present is at an acceptable level, absolutely. And in this case it is. You see, Mr. Bane, we don’t know at all whether Metzencroy’s theories are correct but we do know that the Russians’ particle beam weapon will be completed within the month.” Chilgers noted Bane’s surprise and then proceeded. “Sixteen minutes, Winter Man, I have no reason to lie at this point. Yes, the weapon our … scientists claimed was an impossibility is about to be activated by our greatest adversary. Only ground based, mind you, but the beam will still be capable of picking up and totally eviscerating any missiles we launch before they even get close to striking distance. Do you know what that means, Mr. Bane, do you have any idea? The Russians will have won. They’ll be able to institute a first strike fully aware that they can brush aside any retaliation we mount with barely an effort. So I took matters into my own hands to save this country from its own disastrous future. For years the Russians have thrown all their scientific energies into developing their beam weapon, believing it to be the ultimate force in the universe. They’re in for quite a surprise. Even if the beam were operational today, and it may well be, it would be helpless to do anything about the thirty-six missiles now irrevocably on their way. You can’t hit what you can’t see, Mr. Bane, and by the time the warheads become visible they’ll be over their targets.”

Now it was Chilgers who leaned forward. “You see, we’re talking about risk here all right, acceptable risk. To me the very real risk of a working Soviet beam weapon is far less acceptable than the risk presented by a crazed scientist.”

“It really is that simple for you, isn’t it?” Bane charged. “All you can see are war plans and casualty figures presented on green print-out paper by some monster computer and you look at people the same way. Look a little closer, Colonel. Einstein discovered a power so frightening he spent the last of his years far away from the laboratory. Only two men had any idea what this power might be. One ended up with a pair of right hands because of it, While the other rediscovered it only to realize the same thing Einstein did forty years ago: that it represents Armageddon, Colonel, the Big Bang theory in reverse. Think about it, Colonel, for once just think!”

“Thirteen minutes, Mr. Bane. And I should imagine the guards will be coming to check on me well before then.” Chilgers paused, eyed Davey in the rear of the room. “Of course there’s an alternative to execution for you. You could join us, in a high-level position too. All I would ask in return is that you … help us with the boy. The Russians don’t have Vortex and they also don’t have Davey Phelps. His power needs to be developed, controlled. Help us do so.”

Bane snapped. All the reason in him gave way to impulse. He was across the side of Chilgers’ desk in an instant, the tip of a letter opener pressed firmly against the colonel’s jugular.

“There’s got to be a way to stop those missiles, Colonel. Tell me or all you’ll see in the next thirteen minutes is your blood spilling on the desk.” And he pressed the point a fraction closer.

“Twelve, Mr. Bane,” Chilgers corrected, not even flinching. “My idea of surgery to remove the boy’s brain was rushed, wrong,” he managed through a contracted throat. “Of course with you around to help control and coax him, such rash action will no longer be necessary. You have my word.”

It was the final statement that nearly triggered Bane’s hand into a tearing motion, but then something occurred to him. Chilgers had struck a chord in his mind. He’d had the means to obtain the information he needed all along. How negligent he had been. He could only hope it wasn’t too late.

“Come over here, Davey,” was all he said.

The boy drew up even with the desk, locking his eyes trustingly with Bane’s.

Bane moved the letter opener from the colonel’s throat. “Use The Chill on him, Davey. Make him obey us. Make him do as I say.”

Davey nodded, turned toward Chilgers. The colonel glanced at Bane, then Davey, and finally away. His expression remained fixed for a moment but suddenly it flashed fear.

Davey looked into his mind and through it. He called upon memories of the wires strapped to his balls, of stinking in his own urine, and of the horrible agony he’d felt when the colonel pushed the button, to fuel a hate which rose from deep within him, awakening The Chill. He felt it coming strong and sure, felt it first as a dull throb in his temples and then as a racking in his whole head.

Bane felt it too, as if the air in the room had been split into a billion separate fibers standing on edge, heating up, charging with electricity. Something forced him to move away from Chilgers.

The colonel’s fingers started to tremble, soon his arms too. His teeth clamped together, separated, clamped again. His mouth dropped finally, his eyes bulging open, unblinking. The trembling in his fingers worsened, and now Bane could see the veins near his temples pulsating wildly.

“Is there a way to stop the missiles?” Bane asked him, knowing he had just over ten minutes left to do so.

Bane could see Chilgers straining to resist. Davey pushed harder. He was master of The Chill this time, finding it surprisingly simple to control its level with so narrow a field of focus. The feeling pleased him.

Chilgers succumbed. “Yes.”

“How?” Bane demanded. “How can we stop the missiles?”

Chilgers resisted again. Bane glanced at Davey, saw the boy’s eyes had narrowed into tiny focused slits blazing at their target. He felt that if he passed his palm before them, a pair of holes would be burned in his skin.

Chilgers’ teeth ground together, every pore of his facial flesh vibrating enough to blur his features. A trickle of blood started from one of his nostrils. His mouth pulsed open, wider with each beat.

“Whole plan,” he muttered toward no one, unable to hold the words back any longer. They came reluctantly, as if his own voice had turned on him. “Whole plan was to have missiles and later warheads travel within individual folds in space long enough to get them to their detonation points. Space would then fold back to normal to allow them access back to our side where they would become visible”—Chilgers mounted another attempt at resistance; blood trickled from his other nostril—“and tangible again. Detonating missiles on reverse side of space would serve no purpose, would—”

“But how can they be stopped?” Bane cut in, knowing the nine-minute mark was fast approaching.

No resistance this time. “Each warhead is equipped with its own gravity-demagnetizing device, but all are controlled from the main computer. The computer can be reprogramed to … reprogramed to … Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! …”

Chilgers started to collapse. Davey pushed harder. Sitting half bent over, the colonel resumed.

“Computer can be reprogramed to reduce the fold openings to an infinitely small degree so that the warheads would be unable to pass back through them, effectively trapping them on the other side for infinity.”

Chilgers slumped. Bane jerked him back up by the hair.

“Loop would continue forever on other side of fold. Warheads for all intents and purposes would cease to exist in our dimension.”

“That’s it!” Bane screamed. “Where is this computer?”

“Upstairs. Control console in private room in main terminal area.”

“How can we get there?”

“Main terminal area accessible by private elevator.”

“Take us there,” Bane told him and Chilgers fidgeted in his chair only briefly before rising dazedly.

Davey’s eyes stayed locked on him, maintaining their intensity. Bane looked at him and saw the hate, felt it, was afraid to move any closer to the boy. Something occurred to him suddenly.

“Do you keep any guns in your office. Colonel?”

Chilgers’ face twitched horribly. Bane realized he’d have to wipe away the blood dribbling from his nose before they reached the computer area.

“Cabinet in closet,” the colonel told him.

Bane opened it and chose an Uzi from a wide assortment of automatic weapons. Time was the only concern now; only eight minutes remained before the 360 MX warheads would reenter through the folds in space and detonate over their targets. He led Chilgers to the elevator, careful not to come between him and Davey. The computer terminal room was located on the floor directly above them. Bane pushed number 4 and slid back the Uzi’s bolt as the compartment began its agonizingly slow climb. Davey positioned himself behind Chilgers, focusing on the colonel’s neck. Its thin flesh began pulsing. Bane couldn’t believe what he was seeing, what he was feeling. The boy had actually taken over the bastard’s mind. But for how long could he maintain control? Bane saw the strain was telling on him already; his breath was coming in rapid heaves and his eyes were squinting in what might have been pain.

Just seven more minutes, Davey. Hold on for just seven more minutes….

Davey wasn’t sure if Josh spoke the words or just thought them. Either way, they came in loud and clear and he wanted to tell him he could control Chilgers forever. He had never been able to hold onto The Chill this long before without pain splitting his head, but never before had he been able to concern himself with the single target of a man he truly hated. His escapes in New York, the experiments, the destruction of the operating room — all had required infinitely greater expenditures of energy on his part. Oh, the pain was there all right, but it was holding at a dull throb and that much he could take.

The elevator doors began to slide open.

“You go first, Colonel,” Bane said. “Walk directly to the console room that controls Vortex.” Bane stepped closer, hid the Uzi between his and Chilgers’ sides. Davey was still directly behind the colonel.

The doors finished their slide. Chilgers stepped out first.

The Vortex console was located in the far right-hand corner of a mammoth room filled with computer banks, consoles, and terminals. It was contained by a newly built structure that looked like a bank vault. The eyes of the on-duty COBRA personnel followed them as they approached the Vortex center. Since Chilgers was apparently in the lead, though, none took any steps to intervene. A dozen guards stood poised outside the main entrance to the computer center, committed to denying access from that point as ordered. The only other means of entry was through Chilgers’ private elevator and that did not pose a security risk. The men maintained their vigil.

“Open the door, Colonel,” Bane instructed when they had reached the Vortex vault. “Open it now.”

Again Chilgers resisted. Again Davey pushed harder. Chilgers dug his shoes into the tile floor. The blood started from his nostrils again. His face grew ghastly purple, as if he were holding his breath. Finally, he swung violently toward the vault door, moving his fingers toward it as though invisible hands were controlling his actions.

A number of the on-duty personnel who had been observing began to approach, sensing something was wrong, a few noticing the blood on Bane’s and Davey’s clothes and moving in for a closer look.

Chilgers extended a key toward a slot with a trembling hand that balked at the motion. Finally the key slid home, turned, allowing a plate to rise revealing a block of numbers three in each row.

Two COBRA computer operators caught a glimpse of the Uzi hidden against Chilgers’ side and sprinted for the door to alert security.

Chilgers punched in the proper nine-number sequence, his index finger trembling briefly over the code’s final digit.

A troop of security guards rushed through the main entrance. Bane sent a volley of bullets toward the door, felling the first ones through.

The vault door swung electronically open.

Bane fired another burst, grabbed Davey, and pulled him through the opening, shoving Chilgers as he went. Bullets chimed off the steel. One struck the area where Bane’s hands struggled to force the door closed again. He lost feeling in his right palm and thumb, kept the door moving anyway. It sealed shut. Bane swung around.

Chilgers stood in the middle of the small room, features still purple, bulging eyes furious, enraged now. He made no effort to wipe the blood from his nostrils, all his inner strength turned to regaining control.

The computer terminal sat in the vault’s center, innocuous enough save for a clock resting on top of it flashing the countdown in bright red letters.

2:59 …

Less than three minutes and the MX missile warheads would reenter space over their targets. Vortex would be complete.

“Reprogram the computer, Colonel,” Bane instructed clearly. “Reduce the folds in space to an infinitely small degree.”

Chilgers started toward the console, lurched back, a puppet being pulled in two directions. Finally he stood over the terminal and switched it on. His teeth sliced through his tongue. Blood started from his ears now.

Davey moved a little closer, tightened his stare as much as he could. His head was starting to pound now, the familiar pain returning. But he wouldn’t give in to it. He’d hold on to The Chill for as long as Josh needed him to. He gritted his teeth, pushed harder.

2:45 …

Chilgers’ fingers quivered over the keyboard, then descended upon it. He hit a series of numbers and letters, and a geometrical pattern appeared on the screen representing the points in space where each warhead would make its reentry, the vortexes themselves. Though there were 360 separate vortexes now, this one model represented all of them. It was conelike in design, stretching across the screen with the illusion of motion and three dimensions, its insides filled with honeycomb, oblong shapes. Bane guessed there were 360 of the shapes, one for each warhead.

2:15 …

Outside, Bane could hear them working on the vault door.

Chilgers had stopped typing. His eyes sought out Davey’s. The boy didn’t so much as flinch. The colonel went back to the terminal, started punching in instructions again. Figures and letters, random-looking to Bane, started appearing under and over the Vortex cone. Chilgers’ fingers were flying now and the machine responded instantly. The honeycomb shapes began disappearing from the inside of the cone. When all were gone, Bane knew the folds would have been made infinitesimally small. So long as one honeycomb remained, however, one or more of the missiles would still be able to slip through. The door Von Goss had described would remain open far enough for the end of the world, as The Vibes had shown it to Davey, to come to pass.

1:30 …

Only two more of the honeycomb shapes remained, one last button for Chilgers to press. The colonel’s finger rose over the center of the keyboard, moving for the row of numbers. It shook horribly. His last bit of resolve halted his progress. A generation of work was about to be lost forever, destroyed; and Davey could not erase the part of his mind which remembered that fact. The boy squeezed his eyes shut and pushed as hard as he could. Chilgers’ mouth dropped for a scream that wouldn’t come. Then his finger started moving again.

It was almost to the row of numbers, hovering over the middle, when a sudden explosion cracked the vault door open wide enough for one machine-gun barrel to sneak through and spray a series of random shells into the vault. Davey lurched backward, blood stitching a jagged design on the wall behind his torn shoulder. He slumped down, eyes dimming.

Chilgers collapsed, dazed but freed.

Bane made it to the door as the crack started to widen. He jabbed the Uzi through the opening and fired a burst. The guards beyond jumped back. Bane dropped the Uzi and slammed his body into the vault door, grabbing the blown latch with both hands to try to lock it back in place. A ragged, six-inch shard of steel came off in his fingers, slicing his flesh. Bane screamed and the shard went flying across the room into the computer console’s side.

:59 …

Ignoring the pain, Bane snapped what was left of the latch into place again and swung around in time to see Chilgers pounding a shoulder into his midsection, jamming him against the vault door. Then the colonel was squeezing his throat in a viselike grip born of rage and pain. Bane managed to break the hold but Chilgers went for his groin with a series of kicks and thrusts, enough finding their mark to stagger Bane and partially double him over. Then Chilgers interlaced his fingers and pounded the back of the Winter Man’s neck.

:45 …

Physically he was hardly a match for Bane and certainly would not be able to keep this pace up for long. But he didn’t have to. Seconds kept passing on the red clock, drawing the final moment of Vortex closer, and the vault door might be breached even before that.

Chilgers went for Bane’s eyes but the Winter Man caught the colonel’s wrist and pulled, depriving Chilgers of balance. The colonel compensated too much and Bane forced him backward. Chilgers tottered, eyes grasping the red digits ticking ever downward.

:35 …

He swung away from Bane and started for the Uzi but the Winter Man tripped him up and kicked the gun aside. Chilgers struggled back to his feet, never quite making it as Bane slammed a knee under his chin, blasting him hard against the wall. His head hit first and he crumpled to the floor.

Bane rushed to the console. Chilgers had been moving his finger toward the middle of the keyboard’s row of numbers—6 perhaps, or 5 or 7. Even 4 or 8 conceivably.

He heard the sound of metal scraping against tile and swung just as Chilgers was raising the Uzi. In an instant, Bane’s professional instincts provided him with a response. He grabbed the shard of steel from the blasted door latch that rested on the console table.

The colonel went for the trigger.

Bane was already airborne, into a headlong dive with the ragged weapon held taut and sure. He landed just as Chilgers’ finger had started to close, forcing the Uzi away and plunging the steel shard down toward the colonel’s midsection.

The Uzi fired a harmless volley into the wall.

Chilgers gasped, his mouth dropping wide for a scream lost in the rush of air up his throat. His eyes bulged, then grew glazed and distant, locking open, his grasp on life relinquished far more easily than his control of Vortex had been.

Bane pushed himself up off the corpse and rushed to the console, aware the vault door was almost certain to be blown open any second.

:15 …

His own death — and the boy’s — were inevitable now. No getting around that. It would be mercifully quick and at least his mission still stood a chance of success before the moment came.

:10 …

Bane narrowed his choice of numbers to 5, 6, or 7. Pick the right one and Vortex would be finished, the final folds in space closed forever. Pick the wrong one and the machine would register an inconsistency, an error of syntax Bane would be helpless to correct in time. One chance, one chance only.

:07 …

He moved his finger forward, relying on the instincts that had saved his life so often in the past and now had to be called upon to save the entire world. One chance in three … He’d faced far worse odds than that and won.

The Winter Man’s finger plunged down and he didn’t realize it was the six he’d chosen until his eyes followed.

The final honeycombs disappeared. The outline of the cone faded from the screen.

The folds in space had all closed. Vortex had been destroyed.

The red digits locked at:03.

But Bane wasn’t taking any chances. He fired the remainder of the Uzi’s clip into the console until it smoked, flamed, and popped. His eyes moved to the vault door, knowing it would be blasted open before the next minute was out and caring more than he thought he would.

Bane knelt next to Davey and cradled the boy’s head in his arms. Davey’s blood soaked through his green surgical outfit and Bane had to force down his tears.

“I’m here, Davey, I’m here.”

He couldn’t tell how serious the boy’s wound was and didn’t bother to check. He was not even sure Davey could hear him. It was over; nothing could change that now. The Winter Man was out of miracles. He cradled the boy closer.

“We did it, Josh,” he murmured, “didn’t we?”

Before Bane could answer, a blast came from outside and the vault door swung all the way open. Bane sat there waiting for the bullets to come from the guns of the rushing guards.

They stormed the door, rifles ready. Bane found himself rising, unable to stem the instinct for survival that had controlled him for so long. But the move this time was pure reflex, nothing more.

And then the explosions started.

The first came with a force sufficient to slam the vault door back on the two guards who were not quite all the way inside, crushing them between steel with thousands of pounds of pressure. The next explosion sounded and it seemed to Bane that the whole building was collapsing, and in fact, fragments of the false ceiling did shower down on the swarm of guards waiting beyond the vault. The entire COBRA underground structure rumbled, pulsed.

The King! The wondrous, glorious King! The explosions had come from his charges!

Where a moment before there had been no hope, Bane saw a flicker and seized it. The vault door was swinging open again, allowing the two crushed guards to tumble to the floor and revealing stun grenades on each of their belts. Bane grabbed a pair along with a fallen rifle; then swooping up the half-conscious Davey in his free arm, he roared into the main computer area to be greeted by another blast which seemed to come from directly above. Bane lobbed one of the stun grenades to the left and one to the right. The blasts were deafening. The rest of the guards staggered, their shots which otherwise would have been straight going well wide of their targets and allowing Bane the instant he needed to make it through them.

His forward motion toward the door was constant, keeping his and Davey’s frames low all the way. Thick gray electrical smoke from a host of shattered computer terminals and wires filled the room, turning all shapes into shadows that further shielded his escape. Then the main lighting died yet again, obscuring him even more.

He raced into the corridor at the moment a fourth riveting blast pounded the walls. Holding his balance, he slung the M-16 over his shoulder and grasped Davey in both arms for the flight down the corridor. Bane’s bearings had returned to him. He was one floor up from the garage where Chilgers’ limousine was stored — right now his only sure means of escape.

He noticed that the bullet had penetrated Davey’s right shoulder and passed straight through. The boy was losing a lot of blood, and in his already weakened state the strain of the wound would prove fatal unless Bane reached help fast.

The limousine … It was his only hope.

Bane found a stairwell and descended it effortlessly, aware for the first time that the emergency alarm was wailing again, although buried at regular intervals by the King’s explosions. COBRA was out of control, the system of command broken, no one sure precisely what was going on. Everywhere people rushed to find answers, save equipment, flee. Smoke from damaged wires poured through the stairwells and corridors. Sprinkler systems randomly switched on, adding to the confusion.

You outdid yourself this time, King.

Bane blended perfectly with the havoc. He bolted down the fifth underground level’s corridors with Davey clutched in his arms, unchallenged by COBRA personnel. He swung round the last corner and made out the vague outline of the hidden garage panel in the half light. He rushed to the control button against the wall, pressing it twice without success and realizing the system had shorted out. Footsteps rushed about him, pounding the floor. Orders were screamed. Bane had to take a chance.

Since there was no way to operate the door electronically, he’d have to lift it manually. The panel itself, though, was nothing more than a slice of wall — no place to gain purchase — and he doubted that he’d be able to lift it alone anyway.

Three men in white coats charged forward, oblivious to his presence.

“Quick! Help me!”

They took a look at his green surgical outfit, still matted with blood, and then at the prone figure in white on the floor. They moved toward Bane without speaking, taking note of his rifle only when he stripped it off his shoulder and carved a series of chasms in the hidden garage panel with a single spray to serve as handgrips.

“Help me get the door up!” he screamed at the technicians, eyes raging with a surety that made the three men obey.

The door resisted at first, then gave. The men realized only then that something was very wrong. After all, this was the colonel’s car, the colonel himself!

Bane leveled the M-16 at them. “Get your asses the hell out of here!”

The men scampered away. Bane had no more time to waste. Security would certainly be on his trail now if they weren’t already. Worse, they’d know his precise location and plan, and he couldn’t count on any more miracles from King Cong to help him get out of the building. He lifted Davey gingerly but quickly and hurried toward the black limousine, stretching the semiconscious boy out on the back seat.

“Josh,” he muttered. “Josh …”

“Over there! Over there!” Bane heard someone scream as he slammed the front door behind him, lunging behind the wheel to find the keys still in the ignition. He hadn’t even bothered to consider the very real possibility they were in the pocket of the uniform he had appropriated from the dead chauffeur.

Bane gunned the engine and then hit a switch on the dashboard he prayed would activate the hydraulic lifts under the bay.

Nothing happened. He clicked it again. Nothing still.

Something cold gripped Bane’s insides. To have come this far to find the lift mechanism shorted out … No, it couldn’t be. Chilgers would have covered all angles to provide for his own escape in an emergency. The lift would operate off a separate power line and generator. The problem was the switch; where was it?

Bane’s fingers probed about the dashboard and discovered the correct switch on a separate panel under the glove compartment. The lift began to rise, the squealing sound it made the most beautiful he had ever heard. A throng of green-uniformed COBRA security men reached the bay when the lift was halfway to the fourth level. Bane ducked under the steering wheel as a rapid burst of fire tore into the windshield on the passenger side. He heard bullets clanging up into the car’s front grill and could only hope penetration hadn’t been deep enough to do any severe damage.

The engine grumbled briefly, but stayed on. Bane gunned it, looking back over his right shoulder and preparing to tear out as soon as the bay opened on ground level.

The lift sighed to a halt. Bane hit the button which had done him no good the first time and incredibly the hidden ground-level door began to slide upward.

A jeep — no, two of them — screeched to a halt just as the door’s rise was completed, trying to cut off possible escape routes for the car, trapping it in the bay. Bane didn’t hesitate. As the jeeps’ spotlights flooded the limousine’s interior, he shoved the big car into reverse and floored the gas pedal. Its tires spun furiously, grabbed hold. The big car lunged backward, Bane spinning its wheel to angle its rear bumper against the front of both jeeps. Impact shook him, smashing his teeth together and wrenching his neck. He held his breath, conscious of the effect on Davey.

The grinding sound of the collision was still fresh in his ears when he drove the car backward again, spinning the wheel quickly away and jamming the limo into drive. The guards inside the wrecked jeeps fought to aim their weapons, but their shots angled harmlessly into the trees as the big car roared toward the front gate.

Bane never slowed down. His speed had passed fifty when the heavy steel gate came into view and he hoped it would be enough to crash him through. A pair of spotlights from the guard tower grabbed him as he sped forward, into the final stretch now. Bane knew what was coming next. He threw his whole body under cover of the dashboard an instant before a barrage of bullets shattered the remains of the windshield, covering him with splinters of glass. A ricocheting slug burned into his side, a graze only but enough to make him lurch reflexively up so that a second bullet slammed into his shoulder and sent his senses whirling. He felt his lips trembling and struggled with the car, holding tight to the wheel with his one good hand.

Another burst of fire blew out the rear window, and Bane could tell by the angle of the shots that the car was almost upon the gate. He couldn’t raise his eyes enough to check but felt confident he had kept the wheel straight and steady under fire. He felt warm blood soaking through his surgical top and fought down the urge to comfort his wounded areas, knowing he had no hand to spare for the act.

Bane caught the flash of the fence’s top as the limo smashed through it with little resistance. The impact, though, sent the big car careening wildly, out of control; spinning, screeching, its tires making smoke and churning up dust. Only then did Bane raise his head above the dashboard, neck tense against a possible burst from the tower. The car was heading off the road, directly for a tree. He righted it, too much so, in fact, and the tires sank momentarily into the soft shoulder on the other side. He fed the gas just enough to prevent the car from digging itself in and then tore down the open road toward the freedom promised by the lights of San Diego. Miles ahead, he caught glimpses of lights moving in military convoy fashion toward COBRA, their presence a late but welcomed assurance that Washington had finally bought his story, though he didn’t bother considering how.

Bane felt dazed, dizzy with pain. A hospital wouldn’t be a bad idea for him either. His eyelids fluttered. The car flirted with the center line, crossed it. How could he make it all the way to a hospital?

Fire engines screamed by en route to the chaos he had left behind, forcing him alert again. Bane allowed himself a smile, imagining for an instant he could see all of COBRA burning in the rear-view mirror.

What he didn’t expect to see when he moved his eyes back to what had been the windshield was a man in a COBRA security uniform standing in the center of the road. Armed, no doubt, and it was too late — Bane was too sluggish to take evasive maneuvers.

He aimed the limo right at the man, hoping desperately to blind him in the spill of his high beams. The lights caught a huge grinning face instead of a rifle barrel, and Bane screeched to a halt just to the right of the massive figure it belonged to.

“Goin’ my way?” wondered the King.