Carter Nick : другие произведения.

Eighth Card Stud

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  In the high desert not far from Las Vegas is the most secret and critical military testing site in the country. And when its chief scientist, Dr. Richard Burlison, is found dead it means that the enemy is on to Project Eighth Card! With the help of Burlison's very cooperative widow, Nick Carter is betting blind — and the stakes are world peace!
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  Nick CarterChapter One
  
  Chapter Two
  
  Chapter Three
  
  Chapter Four
  
  Chapter Five
  
  Chapter Six
  
  Chapter Seven
  
  Chapter Eight
  
  Chapter Nine
  
  Chapter Ten
  
  Chapter Eleven
  
  Chapter Twelve
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  
  
  
  Nick Carter
  
  Killmaster
  
  Eighth Card Stud
  
  
  
  
  Dedicated to the Men of the Secret Services of the United States of America
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter One
  
  
  
  
  The silver speck appeared in the clear, blue sky over the desert. It shimmered and danced closer until the dull hum of a jet engine could be heard. Then the sky exploded with eye-searing fury.
  
  A deadly lance of light stabbed upward, touched the drone plane, and slashed on through the metal, to vanish into space. The drone hung suspended for a moment as if unsure what to do. Gravity claimed it and pieces began tumbling earthward. Before it touched the dry sands of the New Mexico desert, pieces of the sundered drone caught fire. Fiery debris showered down like some sinister acid rain.
  
  "Damn, that was too close," said Richard Burlison, brushing a speck of smouldering insulation from his sleeve. "I told you we should have been back in the bunker with the rest of the bigshots."
  
  "Don't sweat it, doc," said the range safety officer. "This is about as safe as being with those fat-assed senators. We don't have to breathe their used cigar smoke."
  
  "I hope they liked the show," Burlison said. "Maybe they'll give me a few extra bucks for the project."
  
  "That laser's really something, isn't it?" the Air Force officer asked. He trained a pair of binoculars on the spot where much of the drone had crashed. "I'd better get down there. Looks like a small fire is starting up in the tumble weeds."
  
  "Okay, captain. You get that taken care of, and I'll see to the bunker. It looked as if the laser tube danced around a little just prior to firing. Shouldn't have happened unless there's a loose bolt or two on the carriage."
  
  "Yeah, sure, doc." The Air Force officer keyed his microphone and issued orders to get the fire-fighting team out onto the test range. He jumped into his jeep and roared off, kicking up a cloud of choking dust. Burlison spat out a mouthful of dirt and cursed the departing officer. All those military types were unthinking. He sometimes worried about turning over a powerful weapon like Eighth Card to them. He shrugged it off. He was a physicist and not a policymaker. Let the big brains in the Department of Defense worry about who controlled his laser cannon.
  
  He got into his car and drove expertly over the rough dirt road to the concrete bunker squatting on the barren hilltop. A jerk on the heavy steel door revealed a roomful of monstrous capacitors, dark and silent now that they had given their frightful energies over to the laser. The reek of ozone hung like garlic in the air. Burlison wrinkled his nose and moved through the gloomy interior to the control panels. His eyes darted from side to side checking meters and making certain that the capacitors had fully discharged. Even a slight residual charge could make it dangerous walking through this bunker.
  
  The laser itself was a thick tube almost four feet in diameter. The highly polished mirrors inside couldn't be seen. A faint hiss of superheated carbon dioxide leaving the lasing chamber told Burlison that the experiment had gone smoothly, in spite of his worries. He began noting the various readouts on the panels, although a duplicate set had been transmitted to the main computer miles away. He preferred to check things out on the scene. Even though the entire project would have been impossible without the silent, absolute electronic devotion of the computers, he never quite trusted them. They lacked certain human discriminating qualities. He could tell if something didn't «feel» right. No computer could duplicate his subjective experience in this field.
  
  Concentrating on the data in front of him, Burlison didn't see the shadow-shrouded figure slip through the open door of the bunker. The figure moved quickly through the forest of automobile-sized capacitors to the base of the laser cannon. A silvery flash and a wrench was applied to the already loosened bolts on the carriage. In less than a minute of undetected work, the bolts fell free and were discarded. The cloaked man began fingering certain controls near the laser.
  
  Richard Burlison looked up, his head cocked to one side. The familiar hum of a charging capacitor made him glance around. The emergency discharge rods on the tops of the capacitors danced with fat blue sparks. The laser was priming to throw another herculean bolt of coherent light.
  
  "What the hell?" he said aloud. He savagely stabbed a finger down on the emergency override button. It should have halted the charging. It should have. It didn't.
  
  Still, Burlison felt no fright, only anger. Equipment malfunction was an everyday occurrence for the man. He authorized high expenditures for top-of-the-line equipment only to have the idiots in the purchasing department buy the cheapest, most inferior merchandise possible. A safety switch had frozen somewhere because it had been purchased from the lowest bidder. That had to be the problem.
  
  He heaved himself to his feet and went to look for the malfunctioning switch. This allowed the shadowy figure to move to the abandoned control panel. Expert fingers caressed the controls, telling the tracking computer exactly what to do. The mighty tube of the laser pulled back from the slot in the roof of the bunker, lowered, and bucked wildly due to the lack of fastening bolts in its base.
  
  "What's going on?" cried out Burlison, unable to switch off the flood of electricity surging into the capacitors. He raced back to the control panel and saw the shrouded figure hunched forward, busily programming the computer. "Who the hell are you? This is a security area. You can't just…"
  
  He froze when he saw the laser. It swung slowly, menacingly, toward him. The bolts that should have prevented it from turning to a target inside the bunker had been skillfully removed. Burlison knew from the crackle of the capacitors that they were nearly recharged. A single lightning bolt stab from the tip of this laser would incinerate him.
  
  "Don't touch anything! This is a dangerous toy you're playing with. Just let me…"
  
  "Stand where you are or I'll trigger it," came the cold command. No trace of emotion marred those words, and this caused Burlison to believe that the man would kill.
  
  "What do you want?"
  
  "You were not supposed to be in the bunker," accused the mysterious figure. "The test required your presence with the other observers."
  
  "I saw a glitch in one of the readouts and came to check. But who are you? How do you know all this? This is a top secret government project."
  
  Burlison began to edge toward the door of the bunker. It was a long run, but another few feet would get him out of the firing radius of the laser. After that, he could dash for his car and get on the radio. The range safety officer would be here in minutes. The man might have that rigid, unyielding military mentality but he was dependable.
  
  The only warning Burlison had was the faint corona glowing like a halo around the laser. The man at the panel had triggered the laser's automatic firing sequence. A fraction of a second delay was all Burlison had. Diving forward, he landed hard on the concrete floor. Inches above his head, the world raged with the virulence of the laser beam. One shot blasted through the wall of the concrete bunker as if it were constructed of ice cream. Sparks from ruined electrical equipment showered down on the prone man's back. Dazed, he found he couldn't even stand. A wrench accurately applied to the back of his head caused the world to shatter in a fireworks display that rapidly faded into blackness.
  
  Seconds later the entire bunker erupted, tongues of blast furnace-hot flame blazing out the open doorway.
  
  I'd lost almost a thousand dollars on two rolls of the dice. Lady Luck wasn't with me at the dice table, so I moved through the casino, waiting for her to favor me again. The instant I saw the dealer at the blackjack table, I knew things were looking up.
  
  I sat down and pushed out the solitary black chip I had left.
  
  The dealer smiled at me, her teeth flashing perfect and white. She tossed her head and a vagrant strand of honey-blond hair slid back into place as if by magic. Her intense Brazilian topaz-green eyes sent shivers up and down my spine, and that was unusual. I've met women all around the world, enjoyed their company both in bed and out, but never had I felt such attraction.
  
  "I'm Nick," I said, "and you look like you'll bring me luck."
  
  "Sorry, I deal for the house. If the house doesn't win, I don't get paid. "Her voice was soft and musical, gently teasing. I approved.
  
  "Deal and let's see if I can't rob you of a pay raise." I didn't pay much attention to the cards themselves. This blond beauty's dexterity was nothing short of remarkable. I realized she could easily deal off the bottom of the deck or palm cards and the majority of the players in the half-circle around the table would never notice. But she dealt accurately and fairly.
  
  And I won. And continued to win. Soon my bets increased to the point where she called over the pit boss.
  
  "What is it, Kristine?" the man asked, eyeing me and the stack of hundred dollar chips in front of me. I leaned back and lit a cigarette while they talked in low, muffled tones. It was a relief to know exactly what they were discussing without having to be on my paranoid guard about it.
  
  "He wants to bet beyond table limit. He's won consistently."
  
  "And I lost consistently over at the dice table," I told them. "This is just winning back some of my own money."
  
  "Mighty heavy betting," the pit boss said. I had over twenty thousand in front of me.
  
  "I'm on vacation and I want to live dangerously for a change," I lied. To me, this wasn't the least bit dangerous and was only mildly exciting. My life seemed a long chain of people trying to kill me before I could kill them. I had registered at the hotel under the name Nick Crane, but my dossier in Washington told the true story. I'm Nick Carter, Killmaster, working for the most secret of the secret agencies, and had finally talked my boss into letting me take a short vacation. Getting a stolen Indian atomic bomb back from one of the more fanatical Arab terrorist groups had sounded easy when I took the assignment. It had come close to finishing me off. I deserved the vacation in Las Vegas and since sitting down at this blackjack table had actually begun enjoying my leisure.
  
  "Let him bet it all, Kristine," said the pit boss, handing the woman a sealed deck of cards. She expertly stripped off the cellophane and riffled through the deck. I could tell by the way they slid over one another and onto the table that the cards weren't repackaged. Not that it mattered. I'm a good judge of human nature and didn't think she would use a marked deck.
  
  A crowd had accumulated to watch the game. I smiled and bent forward to look at my hole card. The queen of hearts. An omen for the game — and after. With the deuce showing, I had a total of twelve, hardly enough to win.
  
  "Hit me," I said, although Kristine's card was a six of clubs. A trey flopped upwards. "Again." A five of spades gave me twenty. "I'll stand."
  
  She flipped over another card and then looked into my eyes. She'd drawn the king of hearts.
  
  "I'm busted," she said, turning over a ten of diamonds hole card. I showed mine and a silent communication flowed between us. "Queen of hearts, king of hearts. Interesting combination."
  
  "Mr. Crane," interrupted the pit boss, "would you be so kind as to accept a free dinner and the late show — on the house, of course. I'm sure you will find the food exceptional and the entertainment the best in Las Vegas."
  
  I'd just won more than most of the people watching earned in a year, maybe five years. The casino considered it good advertising to show off a big winner, but it wasn't good policy for me to continue winning. The odds were on their side — usually. With the run of luck I'd just shown, I could bankrupt the casino with a couple more good hands. But I could afford to be generous and stop while I was ahead. The fact that the pit boss had used the false name I'd registered under told me that he had been checking up on me. Sure that it was due solely to my run of luck, I relaxed a bit more.
  
  "Don't mind if I take you up on that. But I hate to eat alone and this entertainment you mentioned would be dreary without someone to share it with. I might just decide to continue playing."
  
  The pit boss started to say something, but Kristine took his arm and pulled him a step away. She gestured animatedly and finally smiled broadly.
  
  "I'll be glad to show you around Vegas, Mr. Crane."
  
  "Call me Nick, and I'd be delighted. When do you get off duty?"
  
  "Right now. Mr. Tackett's letting me off early tonight."
  
  "Wonderful," I said. And it was. There's nothing quite as satisfying as being with a lovely woman. I quickly found out she had brains as well. She spoke earnestly and intelligently on such a wide variety of topics we never got past the bar on our way to the dinner show.
  
  "So how'd you happen to end up dealing blackjack?"
  
  She shrugged and made it an erotic movement. The trim uniform she wore fit her perfectly. She had unbuttoned it at the collar — and the next two buttons as well — to allow her firm, ripe breasts to impudently thrust forward. I thought she was in dire peril of having both delightful globes come tumbling out into the cool air of the bar. I decided it was my duty to sit and see if this happened. You never know when you can count on opportunity to come knocking.
  
  "I went to school at UCLA for a while. Majored in business, but that was so dry it bored me to death. I found other things to do. One weekend some friends and I went up to Lake Tahoe. On a lark, I got into a game and found I was good at it. Took a job there dealing on weekends and one thing led to another. I moved here last year and still enjoy the feel of the cards slipping off the deck, the clink of the chips. The bright lights and movie stars and just about everything else about Vegas appeals to me, too. I guess I'm just an incurable romantic."
  
  "Me, too," I said. For a moment, she didn't move. Then she bent forward slightly and closed her eyes. I kissed her lips. My vacation in Las Vegas was going to be great.
  
  "Ummm," she said after a while," you do that well. Even better than you play cards. Is there anything else you do expertly?"
  
  "One or two things," I admitted.
  
  "Only one or two? I would think a man like you could do many things well." Her fingers caressed my upper arms. She traced out the thick muscles and knotted packets of tendon corded on shoulder and biceps. "So much strength. It's enough to make me swoon."
  
  "You sound like a heroine in one of the old silent movies," I laughed. "Do you need rescuing?"
  
  "Only from myself," she said. Her eyes studied me more intently. "Are you in the movies?" she asked. A man as handsome as you should be in the public eye a lot."
  
  I laughed harshly. "Too many scars for that," I said without thinking. The instant I said it I knew she would be curious. I swore under my breath. Even with a fascinating woman, I can never let down my guard for an instant. Maybe I should amend that to especially with such a lovely woman. My life has too many pitfalls in it at times.
  
  "Are you a stunt man? How'd you get scars you worry about?"
  
  "In a way," I said obliquely, "I'm a stunt man."
  
  "Show me some stunts," she said hotly. "And show me your scars, too. I love a man with scars."
  
  Her room fitted her perfectly. Tastefully decorated in a subdued pastel, it still contained elements of wild passion. Flaming reds and oranges dotted the room in the form of oil paintings — original and by Kristine, I noticed.
  
  "I like it," I said honestly. "Very nice." And that was as far as I got. She showed me how closely her room paralleled her own emotions. She had been quiet on the way over here from the bar. Now she exploded in a frenzy of activity. Her lips crushed hard against mine, her tongue demanding even more intricate pleasures. I delivered. My mouth opened and her eager tongue darted inside, playing hide and seek with mine. Soon our hands began to explore the curves and contours of each other's body, and our clothing seemed to evaporate like dewdrops in the morning sun.
  
  Her bed was impossibly soft. I felt as if I were floating when she lay down beside me. My inner tensions grew as her passion fed mine. I found I couldn't get enough of her. My hand slithered up and down the gloriously naked expanse of her smoothly skinned body, relishing the coolness that turned rapidly into warm, sweaty female flesh.
  
  "Oh, Nick darling, I need you so. From the second I saw you in the casino, I knew we were meant for each other. Don't stop, ohhh, yes! That's what I want!"
  
  I rolled atop her, her legs opening willingly for me. My heavy, muscular body moved with the ease of familiarity. I felt her sex surround me, clutching and warm and humid. Moving with great deliberation, I thrust and pulled until both of us were moaning and panting with desire. She bucked and thrashed about under my weight, and I knew the time had arrived. Faster, I drove myself into her wanton depths until we both felt that wondrous sensation of ice and iron gripping at our consciousnesses.
  
  Afterward, her arms circled my neck and pulled my head down. Her lips met mine in a quick, almost chaste kiss.
  
  "You're good, Nick, but I knew you would be. Everything about you radiates quality."
  
  "You're beautiful, too," I said, meaning it more than I'd ever meant anything in my life. "Unique, one of a kind."
  
  "I bet you say that to all your ladies," she joked, her nimble fingers tracing along a spiderweb of scars on my chest. Her fingertips were much nicer than the knife blades that had left those marks.
  
  "I only say that to the beautiful, unique ones. And you're…" I winced at the sudden pain lancing into my right shoulder.
  
  "Nick! What's wrong? You jumped so and your face turned deathly pale. Are you alright?"
  
  Her hands moved along my body to make things alright, but Kristine couldn't know that she would be unable to ease the pain I felt The physical pain was minor — only a dull throbbing remained under the spot where my emergency signal was implanted. The real pain came in telling this sexy blonde that I had to leave her now.
  
  Being a secret agent can be a real drag at times.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  "You'd better have a damn good reason for calling me," I said.
  
  The man seated in the lounge chair beside the hotel swimming pool appeared to be on the verge of swallowing the stub of a cigar in his mouth. He chewed so hard that shreds of tobacco fell onto his vest. Even in the desert heat, David Hawk wore a three-piece suit with the tie slightly askew.
  
  "I only use the emergency signal when it is an emergency, N3," he said in a dour voice. "I don't like this any better than you. At least you didn't have the President dragging you out of bed at four AM."
  
  I bit back a nasty reply about Hawk not missing out on as much as I had when he dragged me from Kristine's bed. Hawk didn't care about my personal life, neither approving nor disapproving. To him business was all that mattered. If my love life suffered, it was none of his concern.
  
  "Is it wise calling me by my code number?" I asked, glancing around the pool area as casually as I could. The bright lights focused primarily on the swimming pool, where two attractive women swam back and forth, cavorting like dolphins in the open sea. The lifeguard had gone off duty. The only others in sight were a couple necking under one of the broad umbrellas on the far side of the pool.
  
  "Those two whose amorous activities you seem so engrossed in are ours. And the frolicking water sprites in the pool, as much as they look like chorus girls, are operatives from the Denver office. The entire area is electronically secured, and no one can see our lips from the hotel windows. Satisfied, N3?"
  
  "I see I should pay more attention to our Denver office," I said, nodding in appreciation. "So the entire area is safe?"
  
  "Definitely." Hawk gnawed a bit more on his cigar and shifted his weight in the creaking lounge chair. "Have you heard of Eighth Card?"
  
  "Sounds like a game in one of the casinos."
  
  "I am not amused by your attempts at levity. The United States of America is in a race with Russia to successfully develop a laser cannon capable of destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles. With the advent of the MIRV…"
  
  "MIRV? You mean multiple, independently targeted reentry vehicle?"
  
  "Yes, MIRV. With every ICBM carrying a half dozen or more warheads, it has become imperative that we have an invincible defense system. Just one missile getting through could destroy the entire country. A laser capable of reaching out into space while the missile warheads are still on the delivery vehicle is vital."
  
  I let Hawk continue. I'd heard most of this before. It was hardly classified information.
  
  "Project Eighth Card has designed such a laser weapon. It has a range of some two hundred miles, delivers more energy in a split second than is needed to keep even this neon Mecca lit for a year, and it never misses."
  
  "Never?"
  
  "If it misses, a laser can fire again rapidly. This is the importance of Eighth Card, the ability to fire rapidly. Any fool can build a terawatt laser."
  
  "If you say so." I wished he would get to the point. Kristine wouldn't cool off but she might cool off toward me if I didn't keep her interested in my scars. Any number of men would be willing to take my place. I'd worked hard for those scars. I deserved some pleasure from them.
  
  "N3, this is serious. There is strong indication that the Soviets are sabotaging Eighth Card. The project physicist was murdered, we think. He was examining the laser immediately after a test. The laser somehow fired and set the bunker ablaze. Richard Burlison died in the inferno."
  
  "Why is it the Russians? We've got lots of enemies around the world these days."
  
  "Many items, mostly dealing with things they've said at the disarmament talks. They seemed willing to swap agreements about curtailing our laser program in exchange for their cutbacks in the Salyut space station."
  
  I leaned back and stared into the nighttime desert sky. Stars winked here and there, mostly obscured by the glow from the Las Vegas lights. Somewhere orbiting overhead was the new Russian Salyut space station, filled with military men spying on us. More cosmonauts would be put into the station within a month or so, making it the largest permanently orbited space station ever. The military advantages the Russians gained from it were enormous.
  
  "And now they won't dicker on that point?"
  
  "Exactly, Nick," he said, leaning forward, gesturing with his hands. The cigar stub never left the corner of his mouth. I suppressed the urge to light it for him. "It's as if they know the laser program is in trouble with Burlison's death."
  
  "One man can't be that important," I pointed out. "Most huge government projects are committee efforts. They have to be since they're so complicated."
  
  "True. Burlison was a genius, but others can take over. He was the one responsible for the crucial control circuits that allow the laser to recharge and fire rapidly. Luckily, he had finished his design work. The prototype was destroyed in the fire, but his plans were properly stored. A new laser cannon is being assembled at the lab in Albuquerque."
  
  "And?" I felt Hawk was near to the heart of this little discussion.
  
  "And you are going to impersonate Burlison."
  
  I laughed. There was no way I could pass myself off as a scientist in a highly technical field like laser physics, and I told Hawk this. I added, "Besides, if this is so imperative, we don't have time for plastic surgery." I fingered hairline scars at the sides of my face where prior face-changing had been done. Plastic surgery isn't easily done and it hurts like hell afterward. I wasn't too enthused about swapping my face for anyone else's, even on a temporary basis.
  
  "I realize this. The President realizes this." Hawk's emphasis hinted at worlds of hidden detail, all backed by the full power of the President. "We need you out there tomorrow morning. It's less than an hour's flight to Albuquerque from here. You'll assume Dr. Burlison's identity by wrapping surgical gauze around your face and hands. Your general build is about the same, though you're considerably more muscular. Wear clothes a size too large for you. Explain the lack of girth as due to being in the hospital."
  
  "The bandages cover my face and hands, the most easily identifiable portions of my anatomy," I said, "but how do I cover otherwise? I know nothing about the man's background."
  
  "Here's a dossier on him. Read it." I glanced at the manila folder and saw that the report inside was printed on flash paper like stage magicians use. I was to read the report and then burn it, no trace of ash remaining.
  
  "Well and good, but I can't fool all his friends."
  
  "You've been badly burned in the fire, you're confused some of the time, dazed but eager to return to the lab. Once there, you can't do anything but insist on watching everything."
  
  "This is ridiculous," I exclaimed. "Burlison's got a wife." My finger tapped lightly on the notation in the dossier. "I'm supposed to fool his wife? She probably knows he's already dead, unless you've done some really swift work. Even then, wives sometimes have a psychic link with their husbands. They know when their husbands have burned to death."
  
  "True, I have noticed similar occurrences," Hawk said, his voice musing. "Not this time, though. Marta Burlison worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency before marrying Burlison. She knows her husband is dead and will cooperate fully in your impersonation to catch the people responsible for his death."
  
  "Is she a good actress?"
  
  "She is," Hawk confirmed. "Other operatives have not uncovered evidence that anyone is suspicious of her so far. Marta Burlison appears happy, even cheerful, that her husband survived. She grieves that he is hideously burned. She is pleased he is coming home tomorrow. You will take it from there."
  
  I heaved a sigh. This entire assignment seemed sour to me, and I trust my instincts. They've kept me alive through some pretty rough action in the past.
  
  "I don't like it but I'll do it. Who are the ones you suspect most in this? Any obvious contact with the Russian agents in the area?"
  
  "That's what makes this so ugly, Nick. The Russians appear as much in the dark as we are. That can mean their brass has brought in a complete unit operating independently of the locals."
  
  "Like in Hong Kong and London last year?"
  
  "Exactly. They don't trust their people on the spot, so they bring in top operatives without informing anyone. We need the best we have to ferret out the spy and protect the laser cannon. This is big, Nick, as big as anything you've ever done."
  
  "I understand this is an important defense project, but it can't be that important." I saw the fleeting expression of — fear? — cross Hawk's face. I felt a cold lump form in the pit of my stomach. In all the years I had worked for him, never had I seen him show such bleak emotion.
  
  This wasn't big, it was big.
  
  "I might as well tell you, Nick. Top secret. Not ten people in the country know this. We desperately need the assurance that the project will be successful. As long as we can knock down all the incoming Russian ICBMs, they won't consider a preemptive strike on us."
  
  I had no words. I understood now what he meant.
  
  "Yes," Hawk said grimly, "if we don't succeed. the Russians are going to push the button and start World War III."
  
  "But why?" The shock was obvious in my voice.
  
  "Our rapprochement with China is part of it. The Soviets have the military edge right now. Now. But not tomorrow, if we begin another big arms program. They've coldly calculated the risks. With their space station to target in their missiles, they don't need the sophisticated inertial guidance systems and electronics hardware we use in our missiles. They can knock out every single one of our retaliatory missiles — now. The balance will shift back in a few years, perhaps in a few weeks."
  
  "With the laser cannon operational they wouldn't dare hit us." I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. If I didn't find the Soviet spy and stop him, Project Eighth Card would be a failure.
  
  And World War III would be a matter of days away.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Two
  
  
  
  
  The ambulance pulled up in front of the modest house in the suburbs of Albuquerque. The attendant leaned back over the seat and called out, "We're here, Dr. Burlison. And it looks like you've got one hell of a welcoming committee waiting for you." There was a tinge of envy in the man's voice, telling me that he impressed easily.
  
  I pulled the last of the bandages firmly around my hands. The wrappings on my face caused sweat to puddle and itch against my skin. I cursed silently, making sure I didn't leave anyone or anything out. Most of all, I wanted to make sure that Hawk got his fair share of imprecations. This was a crazy idea and one which didn't seem too likely to work. Yet, I had to give it a try. Orders are orders — and the penalty for failure was nothing less than global destruction.
  
  Getting out of the ambulance caused a minor sensation among the gathered reporters. Cameras thrust for my face and more than one flash gun went off, in spite of the brightly shining sun lighting everything from above. Instincts are sometimes hard to control. My bandaged hand jerked toward my Luger, Wilhelmina, snugly tucked under my left arm. But there wasn't any danger in this crowd, unless being misquoted counted. "Dr. Burlison, do you plan to retire from research?" asked one of the closer news hawks.
  
  "No," I said, my voice low and muffled by the bandages crossing my mouth. The dry desert air helped pull away some of the perspiration, cooling me a little, but the bandages themselves held in my body heat. Roasting in my own juices, I prayed for a speedy end to this impromptu news conference.
  
  My prayers were answered by an angel. Hair as dark as a raven's wing, she rushed out into the crowd, pushing reporters back with more energy than I could have mustered in the heat. For her diminutive size, Marta Burlison proved a real juggernaut.
  
  "Leave him alone!" she cried. "He's been severely injured. Don't hassle him! He needs his rest. When he's able, he'll give you all the information you want."
  
  The reporters responded swiftly to this new irritant, much like an oyster turning a grain of sand into a pearl. They closed on the woman and thrust their microphones into her face, training cameras on her as they asked their impertinent questions. Seeing momentary fear cross the woman's face — my wife's face, I corrected myself mentally — I acted. Pushing two of the reporters aside, I put my arm around the quaking shoulders and pulled her close.
  
  She made quite an armful. The assignment began to take on new and more interesting prospects.
  
  "Project information officer will give a statement," I said, hoping I sounded both brusque and tired. "Now please go. My wife is distraught, and I am very tired after my ordeal."
  
  Without waiting to see if there would be any further questions, I steered Marta into the house and made a point of slamming the door as hard as I could. It surprised me when I found this wasn't possible. The thick bandages on my hands prevented me from getting the proper grip on the edge of the door. I'd have to do something about that. Wilhelmina required a certain amount of finger mobility even though I had the trigger filed down to a hair-pull. And if my Luger was difficult to use, Hugo, my knife, would be even more of a chore to hang onto in a fight.
  
  Malta's trembling hands gripped my arms, more to steady her than me. She shook her head, dark hair flying in wild disarray around her shoulders. The strong afternoon sun filtering in the windows caught and highlighted her hair, making it shimmer like a halo. She wore a simple dress, unbuttoned just enough to show the snowy white flare of her breasts. A trim waist, womanly hips, and model-slender legs completed a very attractive package.
  
  "Dr. Burlison was a very lucky man," I said.
  
  "What? Oh, yes, that's right. You've never seen me before, have you?" Her voice betrayed her emotions even more than the visible manifestations. "Do I pass your inspection? Is the dead man's wife adequate for the super-spy?"
  
  "I am Richard Daniel Burlison, Ph.D., Cal Tech, class of 69, not anyone else," I said, making sure that my tone told her that she would have to live the lie of my existence as surely as I was going to.
  
  "Oh, sorry — Rich," she said with fine contempt in her voice. She turned and fumbled out a cigarette from a pack on the table. Seeing that she wasn't going to get it lit without burning herself, I clumsily steadied the lighter for her. Startlingly blue eyes glared up at me. I knew then that this assignment would be harder than any other I'd ever attempted. Without her complete cooperation, I was caught between a rock and a hard place.
  
  "Look, Marta, I know this isn't easy for you. The very idea of having someone take your husband's place — even temporarily — would be a strain. Knowing he's dead and pretending he's still alive has to be the hardest thing you've done in your life."
  
  "You're telling me?" she snapped. Her voice softened a little as she continued. "Look, super-spy, the only reason I'm going along with this charade is to get Rich's murderer. I don't give a damn about that project of his or the people at the labs or anything. I want revenge, pure and simple."
  
  "Is that the way the Defense Intelligence Agency trains its people?"
  
  "I'm not with the DIA any longer. Thank God, I'm not. What nerve-racking work! And I had to marry Rich and get all caught up again in the Q clearances and the top secret material, all neatly filed with the red and white stripes around the borders, and all the rest of it. No matter what they say, I know that's why he was killed."
  
  "You have suspects?" I asked. The dossier on Marta Burlison barely lived up to the actual woman. Nothing had been said about the coals of revenge burning so brightly in her. I'd have to watch her every second, or she would jeopardize the assignment in favor of only wreaking her vengeance. While that would be nice from an emotional viewpoint, I had bigger fish to fry. I had to find a Russian agent and eliminate him, making sure he failed totally in his mission.
  
  "All of them. None of them. I don't know. I was enjoying being a middle-class, suburban housewife. I didn't even bug Rich about his work. Not that he would have told me much, anyway. He was devoted, and if the security people said jump, he'd only ask how high. But there was some socializing at the labs." She puffed hard on the cigarette. I watched the ash creep toward the filter and then go out with a tiny flare. She viciously stubbed out the cigarette and lit another one. This time her hands obeyed her.
  
  I unconsciously rubbed the back of my hand across hidden lips. The bandage tasted medicinal and sterile. A drink would help put me back into the right frame of mind. I went to the small wet bar at the end of the room and fixed myself a Kahlua on the rocks. Not a favorite of mine, but Burlison didn't seem to be able to get enough of this coffee liqueur. Since Nick Carter had ceased to exist in favor of reanimating Richard Burlison, if only for a short while, I drank the liqueur through a straw, wishing it were a bourbon on the rocks instead.
  
  Marta tensed when she noticed my choice of drink, then laughed. It was a sterile laugh, devoid of real humor.
  
  "You've done your homework."
  
  "Super-spy's training," I said, slowly circling the room. Small details pointed to the AXE debugging crew that had worked over the place just hours before. An untrained eye might have missed the clues. A slight amount of dust disturbed on the top of a picture frame, a new nick on the rim of the telephone where they had examined the microphone assembly, small scratches at the baseboards. I'd have to tell Hawk that the crew had been hasty and left behind too many indications of a debugging. It is impossible not to show some sign of a careful search, if you know what to look for, but they hadn't been meticulous enough. We weren't playing against amateurs.
  
  "Don't worry," said Marta. "The crew was authorized by the lab. They come through once every six months or so on general principles. It wasn't too far off their scheduled appearance — and the men were very thorough. It embarrassed me that I hadn't dusted."
  
  "You watched them?"
  
  She nodded, then said, "That looks good. Why don't you fix me a drink, too? I can use one to calm my nerves."
  
  Mentally, I flipped through pages indelibly etched in my mind. She drank vodka martinis, but not during the day. I fixed her a vodka collins. Her eyebrows arched slightly at the sight of the drink.
  
  "You are very thorough yourself."
  
  "It comes from living with such a beautiful wife for three years, six months, and two days," I said, gently forcing her back into the roles we both would have to play in public.
  
  "Rich wouldn't know that," she said, shaking her head. "He had a terrible time recalling exact dates. He failed a history course twice in college because he couldn't remember what days the class met, much less all the required dates of battles, treaties, and revolutions. He even mixed up his own birthday one year."
  
  "Thanks," I said. "Ill remember to forget dates now. There's so much that can't get into a person's files. I need you. The entire country needs you."
  
  Marta started to say something but was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. I cast a quick glance in the direction of the plain wood portal, setting my drink down next to the sofa out of sight. Men just out of the burn and trauma unit weren't allowed liquor, even mild stuff like Kahlua.
  
  "Dr. Sutter," said Marta loudly, opening the door only a crack, "how nice of you to stop by. But could you come back later? Richard just got here and we want to…"
  
  I approved of the way she handled Harold Sutter. Her voice contained just the right amounts of irritation, apology, and cajoling. She must have been more than just a desk jockey for the DIA. I'd have to ask since that information hadn't been supplied to me. The powers that be didn't think I had a "need to know."
  
  "I'll just stay a moment, my dear." A gray-haired, short, slightly paunchy man pushed his way past her. "I talked to the doctor at the hospital, and he said Richard could have a visitor or two, as long as he didn't tire himself unduly."
  
  "Harold," I said, hoping my voice sounded weak enough. "So good of you to see this burned relic. How're things at the lab?" I figured this was safe ground. I hadn't had time to go over Sutter's dossier thoroughly enough to know what else to say.
  
  He chuckled drily, smiling like some overweight elf. "I see even the fire's not enough to keep you away from your work. I just wanted to tell you that we have everything under control. Ed and I have taken over the programming for the big test. Anne is a great help, too. She knows a lot more than some of those kids with brand new Ph.D.'s that we've been getting lately. You just rest and you'll be back out on site before you know it."
  
  The man licked his lips, and I saw he was consumed with the need to know the extent of my burns. I couldn't tell if suspicion lurked behind those rheumy eyes or not.
  
  "Glad to hear everyone's handling my job so well," I said, wishing I had more information about him. This lack is what happens when an assignment comes up too suddenly. "Want a drink?" I asked him.
  
  I tensed at his reaction. If I'd offered a man dying of thirst a glass of cool water, the expression couldn't have been one of greater desperation. He raced to the bar, poured a stiff slug of bourbon into a glass, and downed it without even making a face. I'd seen men drink like that before. Harold Sutter, in addition to being the director of Project Eighth Card, was an alcoholic. Perhaps my dawning suspicions transmitted themselves to him. He stiffened as I watched.
  
  "Well, Richard, this is a remarkable recovery you've made. I just wish the doctors would have let me visit you sooner. Not like them to keep all visitors away."
  
  "Please, Dr. Sutter, Richard is tiring fast. This is the first day they haven't stuck an IV in his arm. And the bandages…" Marta allowed her voice to trail off, as if in concern for her injured husband. I barely took notice of her performance now. My full attention focused on Harold Sutter.
  
  The man suspected me. I could feel it.
  
  "You're so right, my dear. I'll be seeing you, soon I hope, Richard. Without the bandages." He left, the door securely clicking shut behind him.
  
  "What did I say wrong?" I demanded the instant Marta sat down on the sofa beside me. "He knew almost instantly that I was neither injured nor Richard Burlison."
  
  "He suspects," she said. "That was a big mistake offering him a drink. Rich has disapproved of Sutter's drinking ever since he went to work at the lab. Several times at parties. Rich has even embarrassed Sutter about it. Rich would never have offered him a drink of anything stronger than water."
  
  "Christ," I muttered, "a man like that drinking like a fish. Who'd have thought it?"
  
  "The pressure's greater at the top of the heap," Marta said bitterly. "Or don't you react to pressure? Are you one of those cold-blooded types who gets off on the pressure?"
  
  "I'm just a guy doing a job," I replied, irritated at her in spite of myself. Something about her got to me, and there was nothing I could do about it. "And right now, these bandages make my job stifling. Help me off with them, will you?"
  
  The touch of cool fingers was balm for my nonexistent wounds.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  "You're a good cook. That wasn't in your dossier, either. "The meal had been superb. Marta was far from being a cordon bleu, but I was starved and the food had been ample. The way her face lit up with the compliment made it all the more worthwhile. The longer I talked with her, the more I came to see how much of a strain she was under.
  
  "You're being polite. That's something Rich never was. He was always brutally truthful." She sighed, remembering.
  
  "How long had he and Sutter known each other?"
  
  "Can't say. Rich mentioned something once about how brilliant a chemist Sutter was. Inventions all over the place, patents, papers, all the things that make a company sit up and take notice. I think the government paid a premium getting Sutter to head up Eighth Card."
  
  "How'd a chemist come to run a laser physics project?"
  
  She smiled, this time in real amusement.
  
  "You're with the government. Don't you know? Bureaucrats love putting square pegs in round holes. Sutter's adequate for his job, I suppose, but he really doesn't fit in. He would be better off in his own lab without the pressure of administration on his shoulders."
  
  I thought about that. Stress made men do strange things, but seldom did it turn them into Russian spies. There had to be more to it than that. Sutter reputedly wasn't any great shakes at administrative chores; his secretary took care of the details. He lacked the smooth manner and glad-handing ability to be a good politician. That caused me to wonder about his motives in coming by to see Burlison — to see me.
  
  Did he suspect something before he came? My act, because of that damned lack of knowledge, couldn't be perfect, though it would be good enough to fool anyone not looking for minute slipups. If Sutter was the man I wanted, he already knew Burlison was dead. The autopsy had shown the cause of death to be a fractured skull. That had come before the fire consumed the bunker — and the already dead body. Only the murderer would know Burlison couldn't be sitting in the front room of his home enjoying the quiet company of his wife.
  
  Sutter.
  
  The name and picture of the man turned over and over in my head. Things didn't click. He didn't seem the type, but then they never did. The one thing I've learned in all the years of close scrapes and double-dealing is that spies never look like the spies in the movies. The fake ones are all handsome and suave like Richard Burton or Michael Caine. Real-life ones could look like a short, pudgy, approaching old-age Dr. Harold Sutter.
  
  "I'm going out tonight," I told Marta. "If anyone calls asking about me, tell them I've taken a sedative and nothing short of Armageddon will wake me."
  
  I began stripping off the bandages wrapping my face. It felt good to breathe again. The long, white strips came off easily in my hands. A quick check verified Hugo in his spring-loaded sheath along my right forearm and Wilhelmina in her shoulder holster. Everything was in order. I was ready to check out Sutter.
  
  Marta stopped me, throwing her arms around my neck. Surprised at her reaction, I asked, "What's wrong?"
  
  "Nothing," she said, biting her lower lip. "This is the first time I've had a good look at you without all the bandages."
  
  "And?"
  
  "And you look so much like Rich! Damn them, damn them all! Why did they have to pick someone who looks so much like him?"
  
  "I'm the best," I said without any false modesty. "And I'll find the people responsible for his death."
  
  For a long minute, we stood there seeking out clues in each other's eyes. I saw tears forming at the corners of Marta's eyes and gently wiped her cheeks when the overflow threatened to streak her carefully brushed-on makeup.
  
  "I believe you. Give 'em hell!"
  
  "Right."
  
  I disengaged myself from her arms and silently left through the back door. The chill desert air startled me. When the sun went down, even in the summer, it got cold fast. I looked to the towering mountains rimming the eastern part of town and realized the high altitude had something to do with the quickly lowering temperatures, too. A gentle breeze whipped across my face and refreshed me. Wearing those bandages had become more of a trial than I'd bargained for. But it was part of my job.
  
  Cautiously, I made my way to the back fence and slipped over it. Down the street a dog barked, but other than this there was no sign that anything in the area lived. I quickly walked to a nondescript, slightly battered green Ford parked two blocks away. I'd have to tell Hawk I preferred something a little fancier. If I had to look like a mountain of white gauze all day long, there wasn't anything wrong in being able to drive at least a Porsche by night. I got into the Ford and keyed it to life. The powerful roar of a well-tuned engine told me that there was more than enough power lurking under the hood to appease my racing instincts. I sighed. Hawk thought of everything.
  
  The way the car handled on corners hinted at considerable structural changes, too. Feeling better, I drove faster than I should have across town to the posh suburb where Sutter lived. His house was held against the mountain by some mysterious glue. The style of architecture reminded me of tacky California modern. The creeping blight from that state had permeated even a quaint town like Albuquerque. I had barely selected my site for the all-night vigil when I saw Sutter leave the house and get into his car. He lurched out of the driveway and roared toward town. I followed at a discreet distance, making sure he wouldn't know he had acquired a tail.
  
  I hardly expected a man of Sutter's social position and wealth to end up in a bar at the edge of the Martinez-town barrio. Chicanos lounged with careless ease against the fenders of the cars and pickups in the dusty parking lot, laughing and crudely joking with one another in Spanish. Sutter had gone into the side door of the bar, indicating he was a regular customer here.
  
  Parking my Ford, I casually walked around the block. Two high, barred windows in the back of the bar shone with light from within. Guessing the side door might lead back to a room having one of those windows, I silently melted into shadow and soon perched high atop a teetering crate. Wiping off the grime from one of the panes with my sleeve, I managed to get a good view of the dingy room.
  
  Several men sat around a familiar green felt-covered table, cards, chips, and drinks in front of them. Sutter already had a wild-eyed expression, hardly the poker face the game required. It didn't take him long to lose several hundred dollars. From my vantage point, I saw a dozen ways the gathered men could cheat Sutter. A broken mirror behind the scientist showed every card in his hand. The dealer held the cards in such a way that I guessed the entire deck had been shaved — he could deal out only the cards he desired. Sutter didn't notice that, much less the even more subtle devices being used to clean him out.
  
  But the men didn't really need any of those gimmicks. Sutter lost his money through terrible playing. For a scientist, he had no conception of statistics.
  
  I couldn't hear what happened in the room, but it was fairly obvious. Sutter was broke, demanded credit, and was refused. One of the men, a burly Chicano, shoved Sutter against the wall and pulled a knife, threatening the overweight chemist. Sutter paled and began to babble incoherently. I debated intervening and decided against it. In the split second it took me to make that decision, Sutter eluded the man and bolted from the room like a frightened rabbit.
  
  I heard his car roar to life. Cursing under my breath, I jumped off the boxes and ran to my own car. It was too bad there weren't judges with stopwatches. I would have set a new land speed record.
  
  But luck was with me for a change. Sutter's taillights rounded the corner just as I came even with the bar. Expert driving on my part soon put Sutter in plain view again. This time he went onto the freeway and opened up his car. It came as a relief for me to follow. The wind whipping through the open window revitalized me. The chase was on. What would come of it I couldn't guess. The very uncertainty honed my body to a razor's edge of readiness.
  
  When Sutter left the city limits, my heart began to beat faster. I felt something big was at hand. The scientist finally pulled off onto a deserted lane leading into the mountains and drove some distance away from the main highway until he came to a looming mansion of a house. No light shone from any of the windows, but this didn't stop him from getting out and entering the house.
  
  Parking some distance past the house, I skirted the edge of the weed-overrun lawn and found the window to the room where Sutter paced nervously. No lights had been turned on, but I recognized his pudgy profile in the gloom.
  
  "God, am I glad you came!" he suddenly exclaimed.
  
  Another figure came into the room, shrouded in darkness. I wished I had a Starlight scope with me.
  
  "Here, take it," said the dark figure, thrusting out an envelope.
  
  The whiteness of the paper contrasted almost painfully with the grays and blacks of the room.
  
  "Thank you. God, you don't know what this means to me. You know I couldn't get by without it. I…"
  
  "Never mind. Your gambling debts should be taken care of with that money. But…"
  
  But I never heard the rest of the man's words. A heavy hand shoved me against the wall of the house. The sound of my body smashing into the hardness echoed through the still night like a gunshot. I didn't stay rigid. I slumped and this saved my life. Where my head had been a fraction of a second earlier now protruded the sharp, wickedly shining blade of a hatchet.
  
  Reaching for Wilhelmina gained me nothing. My assailant kicked out viciously, his foot hitting me in the ribs. Colored lights flared in my head. The pain made me wonder if a rib hadn't broken. I continued slumping bonelessly, as if mortally wounded.
  
  On the way down, I tensed my forearm muscles enough to send Hugo rushing into my grip. When the man advanced for the kill, I was ready. The sharp tip of the stiletto found flesh, ripped through it, and sent a geyser of blood fountaining out over my hand.
  
  "Ungh," was all my attacker grunted. Nothing more. It was as if pain meant nothing to him. I found it hard to fight from the sitting position I found myself in so I rolled away, barely avoiding another kick aimed at my head.
  
  Coming to my feet, knees bent, knife held in front of me in the classic fighting position, I found myself menacing only thin air. The man had gone, leaving behind only the hatchet embedded in the wall of the house. A tiny rustle from the back porch drew my attention. I saw the man escaping. Pursuing, I shifted Hugo to my left hand. I wanted to make sure I had my right hand free to grip and clutch and fend off further attacks. Having slashed the man once using the knife in my right hand, I might surprise him with a left-handed thrust.
  
  Maybe.
  
  The door leading into the house stood ajar. I kicked it wide open, listening to the echoes of my violent act die away inside the empty house. Advancing more cautiously, I strained for the smallest of sounds, the scuffle of shoeleather on a board, the brush of a shirt against the rough plaster walls, a harsh panting from exertion.
  
  He was good. I had no warning at all when he leaped over the stair railing and landed on my shoulders with both feet. His weight carried me to the floor. The wind whistled from my lungs and, in a daze, I thought I was done for. A heavy fist crashed into the side of my head, numbing me further. Some hidden reserve came into action to aid me. My left hand drove forward, and again I heard the wordless cry of pain. Wildly now, I slashed and hacked. There could be no finesse in this fight. I had to regain my senses and to do that I had to stay alive.
  
  I stayed alive.
  
  One of Hugo's thrusts caught the man in the groin. Doubled up, he waddled grotesquely away from me. I kicked out, my foot landing behind his knee. He crumpled to the floor like a ball of used Kleenex.
  
  I kicked him again to get him flat on his back.
  
  "Who was Sutter meeting?" I demanded.
  
  A gurgling noise came from the man's lips. Bubbles of dark blood spotted his chin, and he gestured for me to come closer to listen to his last words.
  
  It was almost the last word I ever heard.
  
  "Sucker!" he cried, his hand snaking forth. The blade of his knife slashed through the fabric of my shirt and caught skin. A minor wound, but only quick reflexes saved me from having the knife sheathed fully between my ribs. Again I acted instinctively. Hugo drank deeply from the man's carotid arteries.
  
  This time the blood coming from the pinched lips was real, not merely smeared by deft fingers. He died in less than a minute, unable to give me the information I so desperately needed.
  
  I stood and stared at the body. I knew before I searched the corpse that there would be no identification. He had been a pro and a good one. Still, even a small clue was better than none. To the best of my knowledge, I had never seen him before.
  
  He had been about twenty-five, of medium height and build, with long, greasy hair hanging down around his shoulders. And, as I had already guessed, there wasn't any ID on him. His clothing was rough and cheap, easily purchased at any discount store in the area. The shoes could have been picked up at an Army surplus store.
  
  I had killed a man disgustingly average in every way. I wiped off Hugo on the man's work shirt and resheathed the blade. A quick survey of the house disclosed nothing more than it hadn't been lived in for at least a year.
  
  Dust had accumulated and blown against some walls in rooms where the windows had been broken out. Some furniture remained inside, but not enough to be worth anything. And Sutter and the mysterious man handing over the money had long gone.
  
  A cursory search of the grounds showed where the second man meeting Sutter had parked his car. I found the dead man's car run off the road into an arroyo a hundred yards from mine.
  
  Again, a search revealed nothing. Every possible clue as to the man's identity had been scoured away. I suspected the car itself was hot, so I made sure that I left no fingerprints behind to incriminate me. While a computer search of the FBI fingerprint files wouldn't turn up my name, the police could compare latent prints with my own if I happened to be in their custody. I had already been careless enough to allow the man to follow me while I was busily tailing Sutter.
  
  The way things had gone tonight, getting busted for some minor violation and then being tagged with car theft — or murder — would fit right in with my run of luck. All I had to show for my little outing were a few bruises and a wound bloodier than it was dangerous.
  
  Some nights it doesn't pay to leave the house. Dejected, I went back to my car and drove away into the dusty night.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Three
  
  
  
  
  The bandages chafed at my neck, but I had to be content with simply sitting in the car as Marta expertly steered it on two wheels around corner after corner. Glancing over at the woman's grim profile, I wondered if she always drove this recklessly. I asked.
  
  "Sorry," she answered, slowing the breakneck pace. "I'm nervous. This isn't as easy as I thought it would be. With you posing as…" She bit off her words and tossed her head like a frisky filly, black mane catching the sunlight in a cascade of lustrous color.
  
  "Do you regret pretending I'm your husband?" I had to ask. Her answer might mean the difference between life and death for me later. After returning to the house after the fiasco on the outskirts of town, there had been scant chance to speak with her. She had gone to bed, fitfully tumbling and churning up the bedsheets. While my role called for me to get in next to her, something about the tortured, sleeping face had touched me inside. I'd spent the night uncomfortably curled up on the sofa in the front room.
  
  "No," she said after a little deliberation. "I want those bastards dead."
  
  "For what they did to your husband or because of the danger they pose to the U.S.?"
  
  "Both, I suppose. I… I haven't thought about it. The death, the not-death, and you appearing all wrapped up like King Tut. It's taken me by storm." Her hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles turned white. I gently reached out one of my bandaged hands and rested it on top of her straining fist.
  
  "Relax and we'll both be okay," I said. "I'll find whoever killed Richard." I sensed her slump as she continued to drive just over the speed limit, but the deathrace instinct had gone from her.
  
  For the moment.
  
  Watching the sparse scenery flow by outside the window proved almost hypnotic. A few mesquite trees, some salt cedar, and an occasional cypress tree provided all the greenery to be seen. I snorted at the sight of the tumbleweeds dotting the sandy hills. I knew they were really Russian thistle, another gift of the Russians to this fair country: Squinting in spite of the dark sunglasses I wore, I made out the austere entrance to the laboratory shimmering in the heat-racked distance.
  
  "Better tell me about the security again."
  
  "We've gone over it a dozen times," she protested. "Didn't your boss in Washington clue you in to it? Those people should know the system inside and out."
  
  "They probably designed it," I said, "but the way something is designed and the way it really works are usually two entirely different creatures. I need subjective feelings about it. How did Richard react to the tight security?" I saw her flinch when I mentioned her husband's name. Viciously, I said, "I am alive. Your husband is sitting beside you in the car. I need sympathy for my horrible burns. Am I going to get it from my adoring wife?"
  
  She gritted her teeth so hard I thought she would grind them to dust. A tiny tear of frustration popped out of the corner of her eye and ran down her cheek, leaving behind a salty trail. The dust in the air quickly muddied the track. I reached out and clumsily brushed it away.
  
  She smiled weakly, turning to me and saying, "That's just the way Richard would have done it." I filed the information away but stayed silent. She would have to do the talking. The entry gate to the test site was less than five minutes away.
  
  Marta cleared her throat with a small cough, then said, "Richard wasn't obsessed with security the way some of the scientists are. He never complained about all the red tape to get into the compound. But he'd never praise it, either. He just accepted it as necessary, always watching his own behavior. He was the perfect scientist for such a sensitive position." Her voice turned brittle. "There are three or four stages to pass through, depending on some sort of random selection done by the security force every day. A handwriting check, security pass check, voiceprint, and fingerprint. I worked with the DIA office on the far side of the base and we had a similar system. The security pass is always checked. Sometimes they skip all the others. I doubt they would in your case. They can't compare your face with the photo on the security badge, after all."
  
  I fumbled out my security pass, cursing under my breath. The bandages made my fingers into bulky, almost useless appendages. If I had to use either Hugo, strapped to my forearm, or Wilhelmina, strapped to my right ankle, it could take precious seconds of clumsiness just unlimbering them. Seconds such as those often spelled the difference between life and death in my business.
  
  "Does the security guard use a metal detector at the gate?"
  
  "I don't think so. They search you if you're leaving, sometimes. Again, it's a sporadic thing. Keeps people on their toes." She heaved a deep sigh as she wheeled around into the blacktopped parking lot. The pathetic guard's shack stuck up in the middle of the eight-foot-high chain link fence like an elephant hiding in a herd of wildebeest.
  
  "Thanks, dear," I said, leaning forward and pressing my lips through the gauzy curtain and lightly brushing her hair. It didn't surprise me when she failed to respond, only waiting for me to get out of the car before speeding back toward town, the thick brown dust cloaking the car totally.
  
  I went to the guard shack, the security badge clutched in my fingers. I thrust it toward the armed, uniformed man, who took it and stepped back a half pace.
  
  "Dr. Burlison?" he said, his tone half-question, half-accusation.
  
  "None other."
  
  "I can't allow you in without a full security clearance."
  
  "Do whatever you must." I waited while he inserted the badge into an encoding device. A security computer, miles distant, assimilated the code on the metallic strip, thought it over for a few nanoseconds, then shot back a green light on the control console. The guard grimly nodded at the preliminary authorization.
  
  "The badge is alright, but I can't see your face to match it with the photograph. Anyone might have stolen this."
  
  "I know. Do whatever you must," I repeated, a bit of annoyance creeping into my voice. "But please hurry. It's getting hot out here, and I'm not feeling all that well." The last part was true. The harsh desert sun threatened to cook my brains. My throat was parched and nothing would go better now than a beer to cool me off.
  
  "Your handwriting, sir," he said, pointing to a strip of metal with an electronic light pencil dangling by a nearby cord. He waited to see what I wrote. Hawk had been thorough in his briefing on this aspect of the security system.
  
  "There," I said, finishing off the standard, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog's back" and adding my bogus signature at the bottom with a flourish.
  
  The computer thought about this for an eternity. I worried for a few seconds that Hawk hadn't substituted my handwriting sample for that of Burlison. I need not have worried. AXE is efficient. The computer finally okayed this, too.
  
  "Voiceprint," said the guard, beginning to tire of the game but still having to play it through to the end. He had convinced himself I was Burlison, but the powers that be required him to continue. I spoke a brief paragraph into a hushed microphone, the contents of the message known only to me and the computer. Another green light.
  
  "I suppose you want my fingerprints, too," I said. "That might pose a problem." I held up my bandaged hands. "I only have three fingers that aren't going to be scarred."
  
  "Press them into the plate," the guard ordered. I did and for a final time the green light winked on. "Sorry to do this. Dr. Burlison, but you understand. Security."
  
  I remembered what Marta had said about Burlison's attitude toward such things. He didn't complain, but he didn't praise, either. I said, "Could you call up building 23 and get my assistant to pick me up? I don't feel like walking all the way in the hot sun."
  
  "All the way" was less than a hundred yards, but the guard complied. In less than five minutes, I saw a bleach-blond woman dressed in a flowing white lab coat silently gliding toward me driving one of the in-compound electric carts.
  
  "Richard?" Anne Roxbury asked. "Did you actually come all the way out here? You should be resting."
  
  "Resting?" I snorted. "Work to do." I didn't want to press my luck too far. This young woman had worked closely with Burlison as his assistant for too many years. A single slip now and the entire mission would have to be scrubbed — or still another added to the list of confidences. I disliked anyone other than Marta knowing her husband was truly dead and quietly buried.
  
  "You always were a fanatic for work. Climb in."
  
  "Tell me about the progress. How'd the test go? Other than the obvious problems?" I held up my bandaged hands in mute indication of what I meant. The woman shifted nervously on the hard seat and stared straight ahead, not meeting my gaze with her soft brown eyes.
  
  "The entire bunker was destroyed. We could salvage only a few pieces of equipment. The laser tube itself was warped from the heat, a total loss. The backup unit has been installed in bunker 82. Dr. Sutter and Ed are out calibrating it now."
  
  "But the results," I pressed. "Favorable?"
  
  "You wouldn't know, would you?" the blond woman asked turning and looking at me. "Of course not! You were out of it when you…" She stopped speaking abruptly, swallowed, and continued, "The generals loved it. The brass put through an immediate authorization for increased funding. The computer analysis shows we hit it right on the money. Dead center on the drone with every erg of energy planned."
  
  "Good," I said, nodding. I didn't want to get in over my head. This woman might be only a lab assistant, but she knew more physics than I did. She had worked with the world's top experts in laser physics for several years and had done enough of the electronics instrumentation to be able to construct a laser from the floor up. All I knew about them came from reading Science News and the occasional AXE briefings I usually slept through.
  
  "Look, Richard, Ed and Dr. Sutter are back. You can talk with them about the new installation."
  
  "I want to check my lab first," I said. I had no idea what I might find in the lab or the adjoining office, but looking was part of my job.
  
  "If you like," she said. "I shouldn't say this, but you don't seem like yourself."
  
  "Why should I?" I snapped, hoping my voice sounded sarcastic enough to cut off further thoughts in this direction. "I damned near got roasted, I'm scarred for life, and Marta's talking about leaving me. Why should I be the same?"
  
  "Marta?" the woman said dully. "I didn't know. I thought everything was fine between you two. I'm sorry, Richard. I should never have said anything. This entire business is so terrible."
  
  "That's okay. Marta and I'll get our problems ironed out. As soon as I can get rid of these damned bandages.: I banged my hands against the front of the electric cart, feigned a wince, and settled back. In less than a minute Anne had the cart parked and the charging plug stuffed into its receptacle.
  
  "Up the service elevator's faster this time of day," she said absently. I had made her uneasy, which suited my purposes. The less she questioned me, the less likely I was to betray my faulty knowledge of the building, the experiment, the people. We went up the creaking freight elevator to the third floor. I waited for Anne to get out first so I could follow her. She started to the right, and I turned behind her.
  
  "Thought you were going to the lab." She frowned enough to let me know the lab was in the other direction. That did me little good. I had been given a rough sketch of the layout, but it hadn't shown any freight elevator. I was on the proper floor, but had no idea where to go. Wandering around in a high-security area could only attract unwanted attention.
  
  "Feeling shaky. Could you…?" I played on her sympathy and guilt. She pressed against me, her breast rubbing along my side. In another circumstance, this would have been most enjoyable. I told myself that duty came first.
  
  "Do you want me to get you some coffee? A Dr. Pepper? Water?" Her concern over my well-being had served me to this point, but I wanted to look over the lab alone now.
  
  "Nothing, thanks. But do check back on me in an hour so that I can go over some of the… things," I said vaguely, gesturing with a sweeping motion of my arm. She nodded, a tiny strand of her blond hair falling forward into her eyes. Pushing it back, Anne smiled weakly and almost fled.
  
  I should have kept her around to tell me what most of the equipment did. Even faithful reading of Science News and listening to boring AXE briefings didn't prepare me for the expensive equipment performing arcane functions beyond my understanding. I idly flipped a few switches and watched blinky lights come and go on panels. Since no sirens rang out and no guards came running with pistols drawn, I knew I hadn't done anything grossly wrong — yet.
  
  Pawing through the drawers in the lab bench revealed only a clutter of broken glassware, electronic parts, soldering guns, and other less recognizable implements of experimentation. Disgusted, I went into the office adjoining the lab and closed the door. The thin walls in this section of the laboratory provided scant privacy. I could hear a heavy generator running in the next lab and the vibrations through the floor were enough to loosen the fillings in my teeth.
  
  I settled in the swivel chair and opened the center drawer of the big gunmetal gray metallic desk. A pair of lab books caught my attention. The pages were filled with miles of esoteric Greek letters and columns of numbers, a few computer printouts stapled in. Bold letters on the front of the books spelled out, "Unclassified Material Only." The lab book with the real information about Project Eighth Card would be locked up in the departmental safe, red and white stripes around the cover. Leaving such a classified notebook in an unsecured area would be a primary security violation, something Richard Burlison would never do. I shoved the notebooks back into the drawer and continued to search until I heard low voices intruding on the hum of the X-ray generator in the next lab.
  
  The thin metal walls proved beneficial to my job this time. Pressing my eye next to one of the ill-fitting seams, I saw Anne Roxbury in the arms of a man. The way they kissed told me this wasn't a casual, friendly kiss. Finally, Anne broke it off and pushed away, obviously with great reluctance.
  
  I had to press my ear painfully hard against the wall to hear, "Not here, Ed. Please. We have work to do."
  
  "Anne, really, darling. It gets lonely out there in the middle of the desert. Thinking about you makes it even worse."
  
  "I suppose you start thinking even the prairie dogs look attractive," she joked, her supple fingers stroking over the man's arms. I got a quick look before shifting my ear to the metallic panel to listen again.
  
  "I mostly think about you." He kissed her again, and she melted into his arms. So much for a scientific laboratory being free of all the office intrigues and romances found in other businesses. Human beings don't change; only their jobs do.
  
  "Not here," I heard her protest. "What if one of the guards finds us?"
  
  "We'll both wear our security badges. What can he say about two naked people as long as they're wearing the damned security badges?"
  
  She snickered and brushed fingertips across his badge, dangling from a clip on his lab coat pocket.
  
  "You think we could get away with it. Dr. George? If we wore our badges?"
  
  "Into the photo darkroom, Miss Roxbury. No one will open the door if they think we're working."
  
  They walked off toward a small room at the far end of the other lab, soon passing out of my narrow line of sight. I saw the reflected red flash of a warning light and heard a door slam. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Anne and Dr. Edward George had gone into the darkroom to see what developed.
  
  Leaning back in the chair at the desk, I thought hard about what my next course of action should be. The laboratory yielded little to my untrained eye. I had no idea what I might find. Some tiny clue that a vital piece of equipment was out of place, perhaps. Not knowing what 99 percent of the equipment did prevented that line of inquiry from amounting to a hill of beans. An on-site examination of the ruined bunker where the test firing had occurred seemed the only likely way to proceed.
  
  And with Anne Roxbury and my erstwhile associate, Edward George, busily attending to one another, this was the perfect time for me to make my explorations.
  
  Another count against the bandages swaddling my face and hands: the dust clung tenaciously to the gauze. I looked like a mobile dustball before I had arrived at the distant test site. Getting a car from the in-compound car pool had been easy. The security measures there were simplified versions of those used at the main gate. The only added requirement was presentation of a special government driver's license. I had one made out in Burlison's name but with my thumbprint on it.
  
  That had been the easy part. Next easiest was finding the road to the bunker. Hardest was putting up with the choking dust. I took small consolation in the fact that this was the rainy season and that an occasional brief shower held down the brown grit to some extent — this desert got less than seven inches of rain a year and I had been unlucky enough to miss the day when it all fell.
  
  The bunker looked like one left in Dresden after the World War II firebombings. Concrete walls were charred with ugly rivers of black where flames had lashed up with an intensity that made me shiver in spite of the heat. Small wonder that Burlison hadn't survived the fire. Even if the blow on his skull hadn't killed him, there wouldn't have been any escape for him from the bunker. He might have been lucky to die fast. Even the metal latches on the heavy steel door had turned viscid and flowed into contorted, unnatural shapes.
  
  The door presented my first real challenge. The hinges had at one time allowed for a smoothly opening door. No longer. The fire had destroyed any lubrication on those hinges. I had to tug and pull using my full strength to even budge the door. A tortured groan sounded from the metal and a fraction of an inch was gained. The door opened with startling suddenness. I managed to keep my feet, but the bandages on my hands shredded with the effort. I shoved the door all the way open and went into the Stygian maw, my nose beginning to drip due to the heavy burned-insulation odor lingering inside.
  
  The dimness caused me to take off my sunglasses. Even then it took several minutes before my eyes adjusted to the dimmer light level. I slowly surveyed the ruins. An incendiary bomb couldn't have done a better job of reducing the expensive equipment to worthless junk. The instrumentation cases had melted in some places, exposing extensive electronic guts. The heat-sensitive printed circuits inside were blackened puddles of ruined plastic and silicone.
  
  Kicking through the rubble, I found little that hadn't suffered from the intense heat. Any clue left behind by Burlison's attacker would long since have gone up in smoke — literally. I went to the thick tube of the laser and looked at it in wonder.
  
  I reached out and pressed my hand against the now cool metallic sheath surrounding the destroyed innards. I found it hard to believe that this eight-foot-long device could reach out into the sky and destroy an unseen Russian ICBM. But it had to be capable of doing just that or AXE wouldn't have had me rooting around here. This was only a skeleton of the real weapon, yet I found myself standing in awe of it. Something of Burlison's devotion to the project filled me then, and I knew his murderer would be brought to justice.
  
  In my world justice and mercy weren't always the same thing, of course.
  
  Leaning against a steel stanchion, I idly ran my hand over the once-functional control panel, wondering what it would be like to let my finger stab down on the proper button, causing a violent tongue of searing light to lick forth into space. I shook my head. I couldn't begin to understand such power. The knife, the gun, those were my tools. Hugo and Wilhelmina were familiar, old friends who served me reliably and well over the years. This prodigious weapon of modern science wasn't really the sort of thing I could ever be comfortable with.
  
  I shoved against the barrel hard enough to cause the laser tube to wobble and swing away from me. Dropping to my knees, I examined the bolts on the laser carriage. Several had been removed. Searching the entire area, I found two of the bolts. Their threads had been blackened by the fire, too, indicating that they had been removed before the fire ravaged the bunker. If they had been removed in an effort to salvage the tube, the threads would still be shiny and the heads of the bolts would show scratch marks through the soot.
  
  "So," I said to myself, "Burlison caught someone removing these bolts. To ruin the test? To steal the entire laser? No matter. He found someone in here removing the bolts, they fought, he got his head smashed in, and the fire started, perhaps to cover up the murder, perhaps totally by accident." I sat back on my haunches, trying to reconstruct what had happened.
  
  Sighing heavily, I got up and began pacing around the fire-blackened bunker like a tiger in a zoo cage. All the clues pointed to sabotage and murder, but none of the clues told me who was responsible. Harold Sutter seemed the logical candidate. An alcoholic, a heavily losing gambler, that mysterious meeting out in the boondocks, my being followed by another professional — they all were vague clues that failed to positively indict the man.
  
  Anne Roxbury and Edward George were indulging in a little romancing on the side. Neither was married, but blackmail might enter in if their backgrounds indicated any sensitivity to such pressure. But my spying on them in the next lab hadn't shown any signs of real uneasiness. Quite the contrary. They were almost blatant about their relationship. Anne was attractive and from what I'd seen Edward George was handsome and a smooth talker, a real ladies' man. Nothing pointed to involvement in espionage on either of their parts.
  
  "Back to the compound," I said again to the ghosts fluttering through the ruins. "Might have better luck back in the lab, though I'm beginning to doubt it."
  
  I froze when I heard the crunch of tires on gravel outside. Before I got to the door of the bunker, someone had started swinging it shut. Although I flung my full weight against the closed steel door, I didn't even budge it.
  
  The sound of a heavy steel bar dropping and locking the door shut echoed through the bunker. I was trapped in the same place where one man already had died a horrible death. I'm not superstitious, but now seemed like a good time to begin worrying about ill omens.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Four
  
  
  
  
  The door wouldn't budge. I threw my shoulder against it and only ended up with a searing pain lancing into my body. The fire might have destroyed the interior of the bunker, but the steel door remained as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. I looked around in disgust. From my previous search of the bunker, I knew that no other way out existed. At one time, it might have been possible to squirm around the tube of the laser and out that hole in the roof, but the heat had buckled the laser tube, partially blocking the opening. But I had all the time in the world to reduce. A little starvation would allow me to squeeze by and get free — in a week.
  
  Or so I thought until I heard the faint voices outside. I pressed my ear against the cold steel plate of the door and barely heard the muffled voices.
  
  "…charges in place. We can blow the whole damned place sky high whenever we want."
  
  "I enjoy seeing the things go up. Can I push the detonator button this time?"
  
  A small argument ensued over who got to blow this place to kingdom come, but I was no longer interested. Whoever it was that had so neatly snared me in this trap, they now intended to remove all evidence of my presence. On this base high explosive was easily come by. I'd passed no fewer than ten storage bunkers filled with det-cord and the more potent P-40s, pink lozenge-shaped charges of high explosive. Several of them connected together with detonator cord and even a solidly built bunker like this would be reduced to rubble.
  
  I had to get out. Fast.
  
  My actions took on an air of sheer panic. Rattling the handle of the door convinced me that it wouldn't open. They had somehow blocked it from the exterior, probably with a two-by-four shoved securely under the handle, the butt end resting on the ground. I settled down and began to think coldly, clearly. Time was running out for me and whatever I did to escape would have to work on the first try. Those men outside wouldn't give me a second chance.
  
  Rubbing my face with a bandaged hand gave me an idea. Quickly unwrapping the gauze from both face and hands, I ended up with about fifteen feet of usable line. I pulled a bent steel rod from the wall and shook some of the concrete loose from it. With deft knots, I secured the metal fishhook to my line. I was going fishing — for the bar against the door. If I landed it, I lived. If it eluded me, my atoms would be fallout over four neighboring counties. That thought lent urgency to my movements.
  
  I stood on a ruined crate and worked the metal hook back and forth against the weakest spot in the concrete just above the top of the door frame. Luckily, the concrete crumbled quickly and I soon had a tunnel-vision view of the desert.
  
  Shoving my makeshift hook through the hole, I lowered it on the line of gauze. I started fishing. Not knowing how close the men outside were to settling their argument over who got to detonate all the fireworks caused me to work feverishly. Sweat beaded my forehead, even though the bandages had been removed. The continual up and down motion of the gauze against the rough concrete took its toll of my line. I saw tiny cuts and rips appearing. I pulled in my hook, refastened the line to allow stronger portions of the line to rest against the concrete walls and cast out again for my elusive game.
  
  Sure that the men had had more than ample time to set their charges, I felt my heart beginning to hammer in my chest. For a horrible second, I thought it would leap from my breast. And as the hook made contact with the bar against the door, I thought my heart would stop beating altogether.
  
  Tugging hard, I felt the strain ripple up and down the length of my fishing line. The gauze held and the bar tumbled away from the door handle. I didn't waste time kicking the door open and bursting out into the harsh sunlight of the New Mexico desert.
  
  Expertly set charges lined the sides of the bunker. I toyed with the idea of pulling the detonator wires free and immediately forgot it. These men were professionals at their job. They would have a backup system wired in to prevent them from having to come back and tinker with the deadly explosives if their primary system failed to go off.
  
  I sprinted for a small hill some fifty yards distant when I felt a giant fist lift me from the ground, squeeze the breath from my lungs, and then casually toss me aside. I hit the ground rolling, but the impact still threatened to rob me of consciousness.
  
  Call it training or blind luck, I managed to hang onto a thin thread of consciousness. My ears rang so loudly I thought I was deaf, and the dust from the explosion mingled with concrete to cause my nose to wrinkle and drip again. About the only good thing I could point to with any pride was my continued existence.
  
  "I tell you, I saw someone running out," came one of the voices I'd heard earlier.
  
  "Dammit, if we don't find him, it'll be hell to pay. I thought you checked the whole place out."
  
  "I thought you did," came the weak reply. "God. If they ever find out about this…"
  
  Grimly, I felt glad for the momentary lapse on my would-be assassins' part. But I couldn't get away without being seen. And my face and hands were now bare. Anyone who knew Burlison would know instantly that I was an imposter. They might even be able to learn my true identity. I couldn't take the chance. The shreds of gauze fishing line seemed insignificant for the job, but would have to do until later. I wrapped the tatters around my face, finishing them off with a quick knot that would have gotten my Boy Scout merit badge revoked. I didn't have enough gauze to do both hands, and couldn't have managed a good job even if I'd had all the time in the world. Hastily, I wrapped my left hand and thrust my right into a pocket.
  
  In time.
  
  Two men came over the top of the low rise and pointed in my direction. I tensed, waiting to see if they fired at me or would come closer to finish me off with their bare hands. My position kept me bent double, hand near Wilhelmina. They'd be in for a nasty surprise if they thought I was really helpless.
  
  What the lead man said confused me.
  
  "Jesus Christ, get an ambulance out here. He must have been in the damn building just before it blew. Your head's going to be on a silver platter for this, Charlie."
  
  "I tell you, I thought you said you were checking out the place. You know the regulations as well as I do." The horror and pleading in the man's voice convinced me he was telling the truth. He had made an honest mistake.
  
  "Who are you, man?" asked the taller of the pair. "You almost got blasted to bloody fragments."
  
  "You're telling me," I said. "What's going on here? I was checking out the equipment that was left and then I hear the bar dropping against the door. I… I dislodged it and then blooey!"
  
  "Doc Burlison," said the other man, apparently recognizing the bandages. "Hell, you're having a lousy run of luck. First the fire and now this."
  
  "Why'd you blow the bunker?" I asked. These men weren't killers. They were too shaken by the prospect of anyone being in the building for that. I almost believed it was accidental.
  
  Almost. Until I heard the man's answer.
  
  "It was weird, I tell you. Doc Sutter called us up less than twenty minutes ago and told us to bust our butts getting out here and to reduce the place to gravel." He stood, shaking his head. "If we'd been ten seconds earlier, you'd be dead. Close shave."
  
  "Very close," I agreed, thinking more of Sutter now than these men. I decided I had a big score to settle with the portly Dr. Harold Sutter.
  
  "What happened?" exclaimed Marta, as I came in the front door. "You're a mess."
  
  "Thanks, darling, those are just the words I needed to hear after a hard day at the lab." I dropped down into a chair and felt my muscles begin to relax for the first time all day. The explosion leveling the bunker had burned away part of my shirt and the once white bandages were a uniform gray-brown now. My skin itched and a small headache irritated more than it hurt. For a top secret agent, I wasn't making much progress. That would have to change — fast.
  
  "Is there anything I can get you?" Marta Burlison simply stood and stared, her mouth gaping slightly. I didn't blame her too much. The death of her husband was bad enough without nearly losing her ersatz husband a few days later, too.
  
  "Run a bath for me. I want to soak. But first, a drink… bourbon." I took the glass and downed the contents. The burning lasted all the way down to my belly where the potent liquor puddled and formed a comforting pool of warmth. To hell with the mild Kahlua Burlison had favored. This was what I really needed. I relaxed a little more.
  
  "Will you tell me? Or do I have to read it in the papers?" she asked. Concern burned in her eyes, and the set of her face told me she'd keep digging until the truth came out.
  
  "Your friend Sutter ordered a bunker razed — with me in it."
  
  "Oh, no, Nick, no! He has his problems, but he wouldn't kill you. It had to be an accident."
  
  I let ride her calling me by my real name. The telltales I had planted around the room hadn't been tripped, indicating no new bugs in the room, and we were probably as safe talking here as anywhere else.
  
  Shaking my head, I answered, "Too much coincidence. I don't believe in luck or coincidence. Sutter was hot to get the bunker blown sky high and ordered the demolition team in too fast for it to have been standard policy. Nothing in the government works to a schedule like that. No, he somehow knew I was there, trapped me inside, and then had the men blow up the place."
  
  "How did you escape?"
  
  I told her, grim satisfaction in the telling. Pouring myself another drink, I finished, saying, "The only clue I have is Sutter and the mysterious meeting the other night."
  
  "The man who tried to kill you. Did he have any ID?"
  
  "A pro," I said. "Nothing on the body at all to indicate who or where he'd come from. Just another nameless killer." I stared into her eyes and read what flashed behind them.
  
  Another nameless killer, just like me.
  
  I shrugged it off. Marta Burlison was part of the assignment. She didn't have to like me, just aid me in deceiving the others until I identified and eliminated the saboteur and murderer. I felt the pressure of time descending heavily on my shoulders. Hawk had been adamant about speed counting. The idea that the Russians would actually start World War III seemed both remote and grotesquely near to me in the same instant. The laser cannon had to be protected at all costs.
  
  Protected, perhaps, even from the Project Eighth Card director.
  
  "Let me contact the home office. I have to report in as well as pick up some information. Could you…" I indicated the bedroom. Her lips narrowed to a thin, bloodless line, she thrust her chin out, and then stalked off like a small child ready to throw a temper tantrum. I didn't have the time to soothe her ruffled feathers. Getting in touch with Hawk took precedence.
  
  I pulled my suitcase onto the coffee table and began stripping out the lining. In small compartments underneath I took out the electronic components needed to turn the television set into a scrambled telecommunications unit. I fastened one small packet to the antenna and placed a tiny video camera on top of the set and aimed it at a nearby chair. I turned on the set, found a channel without any commercial broadcasts, and flipped the on switch for my added electronics package. The picture broke apart, formed, and solidified as I watched.
  
  The woman on the screen simply stared at me.
  
  "N3 reporting to Hawk."
  
  She nodded, pressed hidden buttons on a console in front of her and my superior's picture replaced hers.
  
  "Well, Nick, what's the good word?" Hawk could have been anywhere in the world using a satellite linkage, but I guessed he was staying close to his Washington office these days. The cigar stub appeared to be the same as the one he had gnawed so voraciously when last I spoke with him. Some things never change.
  
  "No good words, I'm afraid. I need information on Harold Sutter. He's apparently mixed up in something more sinister than enjoying Monday night football."
  
  "Gambling? Drugs? Women? Possible blackmail?" As Hawk spoke, he was typing the request into his computer.
  
  "Gambling for certain and he's a lush. That's a bad combination for sure and someone might be blackmailing him with it. He tried to kill me this morning."
  
  I explained all that had taken place. Hawk shook his head. "I wonder, Nick. That could have been accidental. The memos I've seen coming out of his office indicate he's really pushing hard to get Eighth Card running in top gear. This might be an attempt on his part to show he can handle all the details. Without Burlison, Sutter is at best ineffectual. He might have the title of project director, but everyone knew Burlison was the brains behind the operation."
  
  "I figured as much. Where does Edward George fit into the picture? I saw him seducing Burlison's lab assistant today."
  
  "Was she cooperating?"
  
  "She wasn't resisting very hard."
  
  Hawk stopped speaking for a minute and read the printout on the tiny CRT computer console screen in front of him. He glanced up and asked, "Want me to digest this for you or send the complete dossier?"
  
  "Give it to me briefly." I had seen the dossiers AXE used. Details of marginal use ended up in the computer's memory, but sometimes such ridiculous items as a man not liking olives can prove a lifesaving bit of knowledge.
  
  "Sutter's been a regular customer at a local sanitarium to dry out. It doesn't seem to take. He gambles heavily and even his salary doesn't quite cover his losses."
  
  "Why did they keep him in a security sensitive position with a record like that?"
  
  "Same old story," Hawk said, scowling. He shifted the butt of his cigar to the other side of his mouth before continuing. "Sutter's a brilliant scientist, and they put up with his foibles in exchange for good work. Hell, they had this file buried so deep we almost didn't find it. From what it seems to indicate, he just can't stand the pressure of being an administrator, but if they tried to dump him back into his old position as a simple researcher he'd see it as a demotion and quit. He could get a job paying half again as much in industry."
  
  "Why doesn't he? That would take care of his gambling debts."
  
  Hawk shook his head. "Prestige. He's a big frog in a small pond on Project Eighth Card. And you ought to know that there's never enough money for a compulsive gambler. If Sutter tripled his salary, he'd still be in hock up to his earlobes."
  
  "I think he's the one."
  
  "Edward George looks like a possible, too, Nick. He's a womanizer, going after anything remotely female. He might be blackmailed into leaking information. Or perhaps he's being offered enough money to sabotage the project."
  
  I thought about that for a second, considered how Goerge had acted in his brief assignation with Anne Roxbury, and discarded it.
  
  "He's not the type who would blackmail," I said. "He's got a core of toughness that wouldn't let him cave in. I think pride runs mighty deep in him."
  
  "You're the one on the spot."
  
  I nodded. Taking Hawk's words literally as well as figuratively, I said, "Go ahead and shoot me the entire file on both men. I'll look them over." The picture on the screen fluttered as the contents of the AXE files transmitted into the microprocessor memory of my device. Hawk's face reappeared on the screen.
  
  "I want a progress report from you within twenty-four hours that shows progress, N3. I have people on my back. People in high places, very high places." Involuntarily, he glanced toward the red telephone sitting prominently on the edge of his desk. Day or night. Hawk could pick up that phone and speak directly to the President, no matter where in the world he was. And the phone rang both ways, too. I didn't doubt that the President had been calling periodically to check up on all the latest developments.
  
  "I'll get on with it," I said. Hawk glowered and cut the connection. As his face faded into a white field of static, I touched the replay button. Line after line of print broken by occasional color photographs marched across the screen, telling me more than I really wanted to know about Edward George and Harold Sutter.
  
  Suppertime came just as I'd finished the last of the dossiers. I erased the microprocessor memory and disconnected the device from the television set, wondering how spies had ever existed without sophisticated electronic gadgets.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  "I feel worlds better now that I'm clean and rid of those bandages," I said to Marta. She sat across the table and idly pushed her food around with the side of her fork. "The food's good. You know how to cook."
  
  "Thanks."
  
  "What's wrong?" I finally asked, unable to stand the silence. She had been distant all afternoon and now that I got the silent treatment, I wanted to find out why. "Something I've done?"
  
  "No, nothing you've done. It… it's this whole goddamn business. I never figured Richard would end up dead — murdered — when I married him."
  
  "Not many people think about death, especially of their own and the people they love. No reason being morbid, but it is something that happens to the best of us."
  
  "How can you joke," she said, spitting out the words as if they burned her tongue. "You kill for a living. You're so glib. No one lives forever, only until Nick Carter gets them into his gunsight. You're as evil as the person who killed Richard. What difference does it make which side you're on? You both do the same things."
  
  I felt cold rage mounting inside. She'd touched one of my buttons, and I couldn't let this ride.
  
  "You think it's easy knowing I have the power to kill others and get away with it? Sure, the government condones what I'm doing, but I'm not a cold-blooded killer. I feel. Would you want the nightmares I have? The only way I keep my sanity is knowing I'm doing a rotten job better than most others could."
  
  "Why do you do it at all? We'd all be better off if we stopped this horrible espionage war with the Communists."
  
  "Sure, we'd all be better off if we stopped. And we'd all be dead, too. The Russians might parrot the party line about peaceful coexistence or detente or whatever the current buzzword is, but they haven't changed strategy since the days of Stalin. Their tactics have changed to match modern technology, but they still want to rule the world. Look at what they've done in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. If we roll over we won't be playing dead — we'll be dead."
  
  She turned and looked away. I should have quieted down, but the outpouring was as much a reaction to my own lack of progress in solving who had murdered her husband as anything else. I had to try and justify my existence to her. It seemed important.
  
  "And," I continued, "do you think the U.S. really wants to dominate the world?"
  
  "No, but what does that have to do with…?"
  
  "It has everything to do with it," I cut her off. "We aren't trying to force ourselves down the unwilling throats of the rest of the world. We're willing to let a country run itself any way its people want. That's worth fighting for, the privilege of freedom."
  
  "Privilege?"
  
  "Yeah, privilege. Freedom has to be fought for. It's never handed over to you all neatly wrapped up with a bow. And if it's not worth fighting for, I'm not sure we're worthy of having it. We'd be better off under a dictator's thumb, jumping whenever the bosses wanted. Just like the Russians want for us."
  
  "I've heard this before. I don't care about it. The world is so uncaring. It's not fair that Rich should die for the sick, bloodthirsty schemes of nations."
  
  "Fair? Nothing is fair. Ever. We have to fight for everything. We are either stronger and win or we lose."
  
  "But he's dead and I can't care anything about that. You're strong. I'm weak! I'm powerless to do anything about his death. I can't even mourn! When I'm with you and those damned bandages, I have to smile and pretend I'm happy. Oh, damn!"
  
  She pushed her face into her hands and cried. I got up and went to her, my arm snaking around her shaking shoulders. She tensed and tried to jerk away, then as suddenly turned and buried her face into my shoulder. I felt the hot, wet tears soaking into my shirt.
  
  "Whoever killed your husband won't get away with it," I promised. "I do my job well."
  
  "I know," she said, looking up. Her startlingly blue eyes were rimmed with red from the tears, but the look she gave me was a curious mixture of uncertainty and lust.
  
  I kissed her.
  
  At first it was a chaste kiss, a kiss to let her know that I did care, that I wasn't a wanton murderer. Why that should have mattered to me I couldn't say. It did. The kiss slowly warmed up and became much more. Our lips soon crushed passionately, and I felt her body pressing insistently into mine.
  
  "Do you really want to?" I asked.
  
  "Yes, Nick, yes!"
  
  I took her into my arms. She was lighter than I had thought. I carried her into the bedroom. I realized this place must hold painful memories for her, but there was only one way of taking the sting from those memories — provide new ones of a pleasant nature.
  
  "Hurry, Nick, I need you so!" Her fingers worked insistently on my shirt. She fumbled and ended up ripping the front, sending buttons skittering to all corners of the room. I undid the snaps on her blouse and allowed her melon-sized breasts to tumble into my hands.
  
  Cupping them, I squeezed and kneaded as if I held two mounds of pliant dough. But no bread dough was ever so firm, so resilient and warmly responsive. The hard points of her ruddy nipples throbbed with visible need.
  
  She began running her questing fingers down the front of my pants. My manhood already quivered with eagerness like a racehorse ready for the Kentucky Derby. I gasped when she took me firmly in hand and pulled me down beside her on the bed.
  
  Her lips crushed mine again as we passionately wrested. I found the fastener on her skirt, and she lifted her rump up and off the bed enough for me to pull away the unwanted garment. She was now clad only in bright red bikini briefs. And then even those were magically gone, nothing between me and the churning well of her desires.
  
  "Nick, I need you. Don't be gentle. Be as rough as you can. I need to feel…"
  
  She didn't finish the sentence, but I understood. She had to feel her own body responding in remembered ways, feeling passion, being aroused to a fever pitch. It would take some roughness to burn away the shroud of guilt and dread she felt over her husband's death.
  
  My hands forced apart her creamy thighs and exposed the damp triangular patch of jet-black fleece at the vertex of her legs. As if she was a magnet and I was made from iron, I felt the irresistible attraction. Rolling on top of her, I moved into position.
  
  "Do it now. Hard, Nick, and deep!"
  
  She gasped when I rammed forward, sinking to the hilt in the softly yielding flesh. For an instant, I thought she had fainted. Then her eyelids fluttered open and I realized ecstasy possessed her totally. My fingers worked under her body and clutched the twin mounds of her buttocks. Lifting her off the bed as I stroked forward caused her to shiver like a plate of jello in an earthquake. I saw the red flush on her breasts and upper chest. Her breath came in short, quick pants and she tossed that lovely mane of black hair from side to side, framing the pale white of her face like an erotic portrait.
  
  The feel of the hot sheath of female flesh surrounding my erection caused me to move faster and faster. Soon, each thrust forward brought a short gasp to her lips. She reached up and began fondling her own breasts to increase the feelings rocketing down into her lithe body. She had to totally drown herself in sensation to be able to forget her husband, even for a few minutes.
  
  I did what I could to aid her.
  
  I changed the rhythm of my pumping so that I used only swift, short strokes. This produced incredible friction that threatened to burn me to a charred nubbin, but she needed it — and so did I.
  
  Thoughts of her lying there, her legs wrapped around my waist to pull me even deeper, vanished. All that mattered in that one intense instant of supreme excitement was my own satiation.
  
  Her face became a taut mask of desire as I drove in deep and ground my hips into her crotch. And then I was flooding her depths with my warm, sluicing flow. At that instant, her arousal reached its peak and she shrieked, thrashing wildly, her fingers clawing at my upper arms and chest.
  
  "Oh, Rich, Rich!" she screamed out. "I…ohhh!"
  
  Together we sank back to the bed, exhausted from our lovemaking. She opened her eyes and stared at me for a long time before putting her arms around my neck and snuggling even closer. She put her head against my chest and went to sleep. The warm gusts from her nostrils rhythmically brushed through the mat of hair on my chest, tickling and keeping me awake, but I didn't have the heart to move her. Not after she had just cried out the name of her dead husband.
  
  Instead, I lay there, staring at the ceiling, wondering how I could flush out the man who had killed Richard Burlison and who endangered the security of the entire world.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Five
  
  
  
  
  "Do you want to inspect the new bunker now, Richard?" asked Harold Sutter.
  
  I nodded, wondering if the charade with the bandages should continue much longer. The more time I spent with Sutter, the more convinced I became that he knew I was an imposter. The murderer of Richard Burlison had to know I was a fake.
  
  "This bunker is larger than the other. We noticed some problems with the carriage mounts in the first installation," said Edward George, sliding into the front seat of the car beside us. "We want to make everything as perfect as we can for this test. We've got a lot riding on its success."
  
  Sutter keyed the engine to life and tore off through the desert, bouncing and jostling all of us together as if he had a new recipe for scrambled eggs.
  
  "There's a new tracking computer, too. You remember the DEC model we wanted for the first test?"
  
  I nodded, not sure what they were talking about. The less I said, the less likely I was to betray my total ignorance. Again I cursed the shortness of time before getting this assignment. While I would never have acquired the jargon and in-group knowledge of these scientists, acquainting myself with small things like equipment orders and the other nontechnical items surrounding Burlison's office would have been helpful. Just being able to make an intelligent reference to the computer system they'd mentioned would have helped my credibility.
  
  "We got it in after the success of the test," said Sutter, casting a gimlet-eyed sidelong glance at me. "We've hooked it up to monitor the power density as the charge builds."
  
  "And it will do the tracking for us with a precision lacking with the old system. But I doubt if he's much interested in all that, Harold," said George. "I think poor Richard's a bit under the weather. He doesn't say much these days."
  
  "Hard night," I explained. "Didn't get much sleep."
  
  "The burns, "sagely said George. "I can imagine."
  
  "Tell me about the test. What's the target this time?" I felt this would be a safe topic and one that might even give me a few clues if Sutter slipped and said too much.
  
  "A tank will be driven by remote control. The idea is to melt it into slag with one shot. The way I've figured it, we could melt a dozen tanks with one blast from the laser."
  
  "Potent," I said, meaning it. The awesome power of this laser cannon surpassed my ability to imagine. Even seeing videotapes of the prior test, the one in which Burlison had died, I couldn't conceive of the stark, raw energy ripping out of the blunted end of that innocuous-appearing laser tube.
  
  We got out of the car and went into the bunker. The general layout was identical to the other, but more room had been left between the mountainous capacitors used to power the eight-foot-long laser. I commented on this.
  
  "Cuts down on the corona effect," said George. "Not as much arcing across and discharging. Should be able to add 5 percent to the total power output due to the saving of energy."
  
  I dutifully looked around, not touching the controls, more interested in Sutter and George. Neither man betrayed any sign of nervousness. Both efficiently checked through the list of overrides and safeties before deciding the test was ready to proceed.
  
  "Do we have to go back to the observation bunker?" I asked. "Couldn't we just watch from over the hill?"
  
  "Okay, I guess," Sutter said, nodding. "But after what happened to you last time, I'd think you'd prefer the security of a couple feet of prestressed concrete around you."
  
  "The fire was in the bunker," I pointed out.
  
  Sutter glowered at me but didn't comment on that. We trooped up the hill overlooking the bunker and settled down just over the rise. I took out a pair of field glasses and trained them on the wide, sandy plain stretching out like a giant beige carpet in front of the bunker. The blunted head of the laser cannon swung slowly downward, aligning itself for the test firing.
  
  "There, it's already tracking," said George, squinting and pointing downrange.
  
  I checked out the moving dot and saw it was the target tank. It creaked and rattled, dodging in a complex pattern in an effort to confuse the tracking computer hooked into the laser. I heard the crackling of the capacitors at the same time I smelled the heavy ozone. In mute fascination, I watched the laser cannon level, track, and then launch a lightning bolt that would have made Thor proud.
  
  Blinking from the brightness of the discharge, I quickly trained my binoculars on the tank. Or what was left of the tank. The laser cannon had hit right on target, ripping through the tenacious steel armor as if it were no more than mist. I hardly believed I'd seen a tank reduced to rubble in less than a heartbeat.
  
  Sutter's anguished cry pulled my attention back to the bunker.
  
  "God, no! The damn thing's charging up for another shot."
  
  The tube of the laser slowly elevated, its movement jerky as if unsure where to point. It came to rest at a forty-five degree angle with the ground, then corrected slightly. I could hear the fine-tracking gears still aligning it — but at what?
  
  "I've got to turn it off. If it fires again, it might hit an airplane. Christ, the range of that thing is hundreds of miles."
  
  Before I could stop him, Sutter rolled over the top of the hill and sprinted to the bunker, his bandy legs pumping hard and his gray hair tousled from the exertion. I looked at Edward George, who snorted and said, "I suppose we'd better go see what went wrong this time. This is getting to be ridiculous."
  
  He took off at an easy lope after Sutter. I put away my field glasses and started down the hill more cautiously. Wary of the possibility of another trap, I decided caution was more prudent than being first on the scene. As a result, I heard the frantic crackling of the capacitors and saw the almost-solid bar of pure light energy stab into the sky. My eyes tracked the beam to the sudden nova blossoming in the bright daylight. Pulling out my field glasses again, I trained them on that spot in the sky. The flare had already begun to die down, and I couldn't find any falling pieces of debris. Whatever had been destroyed was high up in the sky, very high.
  
  I entered the relatively dark interior of the bunker to find Sutter seated at the control panel, George immediately behind him with one hand on the older man's shoulder.
  
  "You couldn't help it, Harold. It was a malfunction. It's no one's fault."
  
  "There's no way it could have been a malfunction," he protested. "The damn thing sighted in on that satellite and fired! It knocked down a satellite!"
  
  The squawk over the PA system told me that the command bunker wanted to get in touch. I flipped the switch on the radio so we could speak directly.
  
  "…the hell's going on out there? We've got NORAD on the horn screaming at us. You fools just knocked down a Russian satellite!"
  
  I leaned against the cool concrete wall and studied both Sutter and George more closely for reaction. Neither appeared surprised. Sutter mumbled under his breath, and George just stared at the laser.
  
  "What happened?" I finally asked.
  
  "Something went wrong with the programming in the new computer," Sutter said. "It had to be. This devil weapon couldn't charge up like that again without a direct command, not with all the safeties and interlocks we put in. You know that, dammit. You designed most of them."
  
  "The laser did fire," I pointed out, goading the man.
  
  "And it locked on a satellite," George put in. "The chances of doing that at random are mighty slim unless some high-powered calculating was done first."
  
  "I don't know anything about orbital dynamics," snapped Sutter. "I'm a chemist. Besides, I wouldn't have access to the orbital parameters in any case."
  
  "No one's accusing you, Harold," soothed George. "But I don't think there can be any doubt remaining that we've been sabotaged. Perhaps permanently if the Russians scream enough about this. The satellite's not just some weather probe, you can bet on that. Nothing put up these days by the Russkies is what it seems."
  
  "A spy satellite?" I asked.
  
  Edward George smiled but the casual amusement he normally showed was absent. "What else? Someone is out to sabotage Eighth Card, and so far they're doing a whale of a job."
  
  "Who?" demanded Sutter. "Who would do it? None of us. We all nursemaided this project from the initial proposal stage. And no one else would have the information required to reprogram the computer, to know the charge cycle time, to calculate the satellite's orbit, all those things." He glared at me as if he suspected I were responsible, but he didn't voice the accusation.
  
  Their reactions were about as I expected. The tension in the room mounted until I could taste it, yet I didn't want to do anything to disturb it. If one or the other snapped, he might make a damning admission of guilt and this would all be over. It wasn't that easy. It never is when you deal with professionals. Whichever man had sabotaged the test had ice water in his veins. They both continued to play out the roles they had established.
  
  "Nothing more we can do here," said George. "Why not go about the rest of our schedule and examine the tank? This is a hell of a weapon. If we have to fight for its existence in the Congressional subcommittee hearings, it isn't a bad idea to be able to present a complete rundown of how effective the weapon is."
  
  "They know how good Eighth Card is," pointed out Sutter. "Christ, how will we ever explain this? Christ!"
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The three of us left the bunker to check out the tank. Seeing the tons of melted high-grade steel made me shiver. Nothing could stop the laser from knocking out powerful tanks — or knocking down satellites in orbit.
  
  "Excuses, N3, all these are lame excuses," raged Hawk. "I want results. We don't have you out there in the desert to get a good tan. We want the man — the men — responsible for this outrage!"
  
  "Outrage?" I asked mildly. "I read the NORAD report. That was the most sophisticated spy satellite Russia's ever orbited. You're glad to get rid of it — or you should be."
  
  He leaned back in his chair. The camera angle made him appear thinner than he was, or perhaps he could adjust the transmission for that effect. I had long thought that the computer in AXE headquarters could simulate any human being so well I could carry on a detailed conversation and never know it wasn't the real person. That's one reason I prefer face-to-face contact.
  
  "Well-taken, but irrelevant this time. That damned sky-spy had pictures of every major military installation in the continental United States. They'd put it in a polar orbit so it covered the entire surface of the Earth every sixteen hours. There's no telling what the damned thing revealed to the Soviets about our MX missile project."
  
  "That's something that bothers me," I said. "Why should a Russian spy program that anti-ICBM laser cannon to knock down one of their own satellites? You said it was their most sophisticated. If they'd wanted to create an international incident…"
  
  "They already have," cut in Hawk.
  
  "…they could have shot down some hunk of junk that meant nothing to them anymore," I continued, more interested in my line of thinking than in Hawk's.
  
  "The Russians don't think the same way we do. They'd be willing to give up a multimillion ruble satellite solely for the bargaining edge it gives them in the new SALT negotiations. That treaty will never be signed now. They are demanding reparations, public apologies, the works."
  
  "And the President is not taking this at all well," I ventured.
  
  The storm cloud crossing Hawk's face gave me my answer. The red phone must have been jangling constantly to upset him this much. He usually took the political maneuverings in stride. No one survives long in Washington without developing a thick skin.
  
  "The President called a National Security Council meeting, and I am to be the main sacrifice." Hawk spat out the stub of his cigar and pounded his fist against the desk top so hard it jolted the camera. Distortion crossed his features before settling back into the perfect color picture I'd been receiving before. "What progress are you making, N3? Give me something. Anything! I've got to be at the White House in an hour. They want reassurances on this matter."
  
  I shook my head. "Nothing but conjectures so far. If Eighth Card wasn't so important, I'd recommend pulling all the personnel and doing a complete security check on them again."
  
  "No time. You know that."
  
  "I understand. This affair with the Russian satellite still bothers me," I said, ignoring the frown on his face. "There's more to it than just knocking down the satellite. Who would know the orbit of that satellite well enough to calculate when it would be over the desert?"
  
  "NORAD has a complete record of all the satellites in orbit. The Russians presumably know the parameters of their own launch. Any of the NATO countries would be able to request the information from NORAD."
  
  "Anyone else?"
  
  "Japan might be able to get the information from us, as might France."
  
  None of those answers pleased me. I pushed harder, almost feeling the solution.
  
  "What about China? Would they know?"
  
  Hawk froze. "Why do you ask?"
  
  "We've been friendly with them recently. It might be considered a neighborly act to furnish them with information about Russian spy satellites. After all, since this particular one is in a polar orbit, it would look down on China, too."
  
  "You're saying the Chinese are responsible?"
  
  "They have more to gain from destroying that particular satellite than anyone else. Look at the trouble we're in now. If the SALT negotiations break down again, this pushes a wedge between us and the Russians. The physical act of knocking down the satellite removes a source of Soviet information about Chinese troop movements."
  
  "Any distrust between the Russians and us would move the country closer to China," mused Hawk, mulling over the idea. "Have you heard any of the secret talks going on with China?"
  
  I hadn't I and said so.
  
  "They want us to supply them with some of our most modern weapons. The Phoenix missile, some details of our inertial guidance system used in the cruise missile, things like this. We are willing to a gentleman's agreement stating we will come to China's aid if Russian troops cross their border, but we have refused so far to furnish any of our military hardware."
  
  "If we did, they'd be at the Russians in an instant," I said. "And Russia would lump us together with China as an ally."
  
  "Another reason the Russians are willing to risk a preemptive strike with nuclear weapons. A Sino-American alliance frightens the Soviets. But this is all speculation, Nick. What evidence do you have that the Chinese are the ones responsible for Burlison's death and the trouble on Project Eighth Card?"
  
  "None," I reluctantly admitted. "But going on the 'who will gain? theory keeps the Russians a poor second."
  
  "The laser will destroy their ICBMs," Hawk pointed out.
  
  "True," I agreed. "That hardly seems reason enough for the Russians to destroy one of their most valuable satellites. Even to test the current efficiency of our laser."
  
  "This discussion is pointless without hard facts to support your case, N3. Find those facts. Immediately. The President demands it — and so do I."
  
  Hawk's face faded away as the signal died. I turned off the television set and disconnected my electronics. Action was called for now. No longer could I afford the luxury of observing and waiting for the opposition to make a mistake. They had played the game too well. I would have to force their hand and create the opening that, so far, hadn't been given to me.
  
  Thinking about it, I felt the adrenaline begin to pump. I preferred this sort of assignment to all others.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  "I want to go along, too," Marta said. The tone she used told me I'd have to handcuff her to a water pipe to prevent her from following me. I seriously considered the alternative as I stared into her lovely blue eyes. They showed too much determination. She might chew through the handcuffs and still follow me. Better to let her come and know where she was in case real danger developed.
  
  "I won't bother pointing out the risk. You wouldn't listen to me if I told you people might be killed tonight. I will say that this is no business for amateurs. You might do something that would totally ruin all the work I've put in so far."
  
  "I can follow orders. I haven't had the field experience you have, but the DIA does train its people. I won't trip you up."
  
  "It means that much to you? We might do nothing but sit in the car and freeze tonight."
  
  "We can freeze together."
  
  "Alright," I said, regretting my decision but seeing no way of backing out of it now. "We'll stake out Sutter's house again. I want to see if he goes out, who he meets, if he follows the pattern set the last time."
  
  "Did he know you were following him then?"
  
  "I don't know. I was followed but I doubt if it was at Sutter's orders. With a good agent, though, it's hard to say. He might be more dangerous than he appears."
  
  "Harold Sutter?" scoffed Marta. "That man is drunk too much of the time to be much of a menace. A spy, maybe, but a physical threat? I doubt it."
  
  "What better disguise for an assassin?" I asked. "You mentally discard him as the type who could kill your husband because Sutter has carefully created that impression, just the thing a top-notch agent would do."
  
  "He's a drunk. I mean, stinking, falling down drunk, too much of the time. There's no way of pretending."
  
  I reeled across the room, hitting a wall and sliding down a short way, saying, "Got another drink? Sure do feel thirsty all of a sudden." I slurred the words and blinked my eyes enough to make my cheeks appear puffier than they are.
  
  "I…" she started, surprised.
  
  "Not a bad drunk imitation, was it?" I straightened and stared into her startled eyes. "And if I had years to practice the role as my cover, I'd fool you every single time."
  
  "You've made your point, Nick," she said, biting her lower lip. "It's just so hard to think of Harold with anything but contempt. He's brilliant but unstable. That's what Rich always told me about him."
  
  "Into the car. And remember, Harold Sutter might not be the innocent you think he is."
  
  We drove across town in the green Ford and soon parked uphill from the Sutter household. The city lights twinkled in the distance, and I reflected how nice it might be to settle down eventually. With Marta, so warm and near, I considered things normally alien to me. But the sight of a dark figure skulking outside Sutter's house erased all such domestic thoughts. Once again, I became N3, Killmaster.
  
  "Wait here," I ordered. "I'm going to see who that is."
  
  Before she could protest, I slipped from the car and walked on cat-silent feet to Sutter's house. Dropping to my belly, I crawled the last few feet to a knee-high rock fence. I peered over and saw the darkness shrouded figure. He spoke quietly, insistently, but to whom I couldn't tell.
  
  "I took care of the satellite, didn't I?" the man said in a muffled voice.
  
  Moving closer, I tried to make out the features of the speaker. It might have been Sutter, but what was he doing outside sneaking around like this? The man speaking couldn't be identified positively by voice, either. The soft whisper carried the words but little else.
  
  "Money is always appreciated," came the words. I saw the white flash of an envelope vanishing into black folds of cloth before the figure turned and bolted for Sutter's car. Even then I failed to get a good look at the person. The streetlight cast shadows where I most wanted illumination.
  
  The engine of Sutter's car came to a roaring life. The gears clashed and the car bucked and lurched down the street. With a squeal of burning rubber, the car blasted away into the disturbed silence of the night. Cursing under my breath, I raced back to my car and jumped in.
  
  "Brace yourself," I told Marta. "This is the payoff."
  
  The finely tuned engine responded with the deep-throated roar that I loved to hear. Slamming into gear, I screeched around the corner in time to see the dim, receding tail lights of Sutter's car. Floorboarding the gas pedal, we soon narrowed the distance between the two cars. From my previous experiences with these two cars, I knew Sutter couldn't possibly outrun me.
  
  What he did do was totally unexpected. He turned off the freeway and shot like a rocketsled on rails toward the mountains.
  
  "Do you have any idea where he's going?" I asked Marta. She paled at the sharp curves and heady acceleration. Shaking her head in mute denial, I turned my attentions back to the road and drove it in the best way I knew how.
  
  The cold nighttime air ripped into my lungs and filled me with a feeling of power. Every second narrowed the gap between Sutter and me. I sensed victory approaching. Capture him, get the envelope, and use that evidence, along with what I'd heard, to wring a confession from him. From then on, tracing contacts and the others he had dealings with would be routine work. I could relax and leave the dogwork for the National Security Agency people.
  
  Wobbling off the back road, Sutter raced along a dirt road through a low-cut pass into the mountains.
  
  "Nick," said Marta, her hand resting lightly on my arm, "on the other side of the mountain is the solar power test station. Do you think he might be heading for that?"
  
  My mind spun mental gears. I couldn't figure any reason for Sutter to go there. The place would be isolated. Perhaps a small plane would land and pick up some stolen information about the laser cannon. But why the money transfer at Sutter's house? And who had passed it to him? I had seen no one.
  
  The more my mind worked over the disparate clues, the fewer solid facts emerged. I felt as if I walked on quicksand. The only way to get the firm data I needed was to catch Sutter and question him.
  
  "Watch out, Nick!" screamed Marta.
  
  I stomped hard on the brake, pulling the car through the tight corner in the road. As soon as the nose of the car pointed along the road again, the accelerator went back to the floorboard.
  
  "I told you to stay home."
  
  "I'll be alright. Just you watch your driving."
  
  I smiled grimly. This chase made me feel I had finally accomplished something. And that made me overconfident.
  
  I was unprepared for Sutter's car making a swift reversal and heading straight for me. With only a split second to make a decision, I swerved to the right, faked him out, and then veered left at the last possible instant. A sick crunch told of a ruined fender — but we were still alive.
  
  And I was mad.
  
  "He's trying to kill us," I told Marta. "That changes the rules to tonight's little game." I savagely wheeled the car around and soon caught up with Sutter again. Estimating the distance between our cars, I tensed and said to Marta, "Brace yourself. He's not giving up, and this is going to get rough."
  
  I jerked the wheel hard to the right and rammed into the side of Sutter's car. He tried to avoid the collision and failed. Metal ripped metal as I inexorably forced him off the road. With his right wheels in the dirt shoulder, I jerked harder against my steering wheel in an effort to make him lose control and roll his car.
  
  He surprised me with the sudden braking, the 180 degree spin turn any stuntman would have envied, and a quick spurt of acceleration in the opposite direction. This had become a personal challenge to me, and I vowed not to allow Sutter to get away. Somehow, I had never pictured the portly, gray-haired man as having the nerve or skill to drive like this. I had violated the very principle I'd chided Marta for ignoring: you can't really identify a good spy if he's had the opportunity to build up a solid cover.
  
  Sutter roared up a dirt road, kicking up choking billows of dust behind him. He never slowed as he broke through a road-hazard detour sign. I stayed as close to his tail as I could. The visibility was less than five feet, but I saw faint glimmerings of my headlights off his chrome bumper. Opening up the engine with a powerful stomp on the accelerator, I pulled opposite Sutter. The man hunched over the wheel, intent on his driving.
  
  Again I tried to run him off the road. My right fender edged in front of his left. A skillful downshift gave me a powerful lurch ahead needed to run him into the embankment.
  
  He rolled over, kept rolling, and the car somehow righted itself. He gunned it and came after me like an avenging angel.
  
  "Hang on, Marta," I told the white-faced woman. I knew she would leave her fingerprints permanently embedded in the dashboard the way she clung on for dear life.
  
  "Do you have to drive like this?" she gasped. "You'll get us all killed."
  
  "Not all of us, I hope," I said, wheeling the car back and forth across the road to keep Sutter from passing.
  
  My head snapped back into the headrest as he rammed us from behind. This was the opening I had been jockeying for. I slammed on the brakes and let him smash into us at full speed.
  
  He lost control due to the unexpectedness of the resistance in front. He spun around and around, kicking up a huge pillar of clinging, choking brown dust. I wished I had the bandages on again. They would keep my nose and mouth free of the grit.
  
  "He's getting away!" cried Maria. She pointed over her shoulder. I looked and sighed when I saw she was right. Sutter had more fight in him than ten men. I vowed to never underestimate those portly pencil-jockeys again. My arms ached from the strain of the driving, and my neck muscles knotted from the whiplash shock when he'd rammed us from behind. How he could be in any better condition after the pounding I'd already given him was beyond me.
  
  I'd just have to catch him and see.
  
  The acceleration pushed us both back firmly into the seats. This was a straightaway race now, no dodging for advantage. He had several hundred yards lead, but my engine still ran as smooth as silk. The deep-throated roar filled the stillness of the night. I felt renewed power surging through my veins. The stars above witnessed the race, would be there at the finish line when I finally captured Sutter.
  
  "Nick!" shouted Marta over the roar of the engine. "He's got a gun!"
  
  I saw a tiny shimmer of light, possibly off the muzzle of a gun. Then there was no question about it. A bright star blossomed on the windshield as a heavy caliber slug ricocheted off and whistled into the darkness. I saw muzzle flames from three more shots, but none connected with the car. It's more difficult firing at an automobile than they make it appear in the movies, and only a slug larger than.38 is likely to penetrate the body of any but the flimsiest of cars. But that's not to discount the danger. A man with a gun firing wildly is dangerous, damned dangerous.
  
  "Let him go, Nick," urged Marta, her hand gripping my arm. "He'll kill us."
  
  "I'm going to get him. That's what I came out for tonight. You had your chance to stay home, but you wanted adventure. This is it. Now get that pretty head of yours down or he might shoot it off."
  
  Frightened, she dived under the dashboard, cowering as every report echoed back to us. I bent over the steering wheel and pressed just a little more on the gas pedal. Inches separated us now. I saw the gun poking out the window again. I rammed him at an angle and sent the car careening.
  
  The dust cloud obscured the car as Sutter hit the shoulder of the road and slid down a small embankment. It still didn't take him out. I cursed under my breath as I spun in pursuit again. The man must have learned to drive in a demolition derby.
  
  Both cars were close to being totalled. His trunk lid had popped up and bobbed as he fought the wheel, the car wobbling from side to side. Both his fenders were crumpled like used Kleenex, but miraculously one of his taillights had survived the repeated rammings. One of his headlights had gone out and the other flickered as a short circuit developed. My car was hardly better off. The engine had begun to miss. I guessed that dust clogged the air filter, and the fuel line might be leaking. A nose-wrinkling odor of raw gasoline came through the firewall to tell me the chase couldn't last much longer. Either my engine would burst aflame or the line would go out entirely, pumping gasoline onto the road.
  
  "Is he still shooting at us?" asked Marta anxiously.
  
  She had composed herself and looked frightened but was trying hard to overcome it. The woman had conquered her fear enough to be able to show anger. That was a good sign.
  
  "He's still ahead of us, but the smoke coming from his exhaust tells me his car has about had it. Looks like he's burning oil. His engine will blow if he keeps up this pace."
  
  She sat up and saw the ludicrous sight of Sutter's trunk lid dancing up and down. The way he sawed at the steering wheel told me the power steering was almost dead on his car, too.
  
  "He's still got his gun."
  
  "That's something I've been trained to avoid."
  
  She sat primly, her eyes straight ahead, fixed unblinkingly on Sutter's car. I speeded up and rammed him again. He did the unexpected. As he began to spin, he cut his wheels in the wrong direction and accentuated his motion. He spun around and ended up behind my car.
  
  Everything moved in slow motion after that. I saw the muzzles of two M-16's appear on either side of the road. I saw the road behind cut off by Sutter's stalled car. I saw the muzzle flashes.
  
  The passenger compartment of the car filled with the whining of dozens of tumbling.223 caliber slugs from the automatic weapons.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Six
  
  
  
  
  "Nick, I'm shot!"
  
  Hunkered down behind the wheel, I chanced a quick look at Marta. Blood ran across her forehead and dribbled into her eyes. A head wound bleeds like an artesian well but is seldom serious if the victim can complain about it.
  
  "Press this into the wound. It'll hurt like hell, but you don't want to be blinded by the blood." I passed over a handkerchief pulled from my pocket. As Marta staunched the flow of blood, I pulled Wilhelmina free. The Luger felt comforting in my hand. She would find suitable targets in the darkness.
  
  Another barrage of bullets whistled overhead. The M-16 is a terrible weapon for use in a jungle like Vietnam. The slightest moisture or mud jams the mechanism. And the ballistics of the small slug cause it to deflect and tumble when plowing through dense underbrush. For the jungle, it is a terrible weapon.
  
  For the desert, you can't find one better.
  
  I hazarded a quick look and almost got my head blown off. They might have Starlight scopes, but I doubted it. Their first rounds would have turned us both into Swiss cheese. They fired with open sights, but with at least four of them in front and Sutter behind, they had us boxed in like ducks in a shooting gallery.
  
  "We surrender!" I yelled.
  
  "Nick, you can't! They'll kill us!" protested Marta.
  
  "I know," I said. "Maybe they'll think I don't have a gun and get careless. Any way I can reduce the odds against us, I will," I told her. I peered up over the edge of the door. The glass had been shot out of the window.
  
  I slowed my breathing and relaxed as much as possible. Tensed muscles cause jerky finger movements on a hair trigger such as the one I'd filed on Wilhelmina. The slightest jerk and the bullet goes off too high. I wanted every single slug to find a burial site in human flesh.
  
  "What's wrong, Nick? They're not doing anything."
  
  Waiting is always hard.
  
  "Just be ready to run like hell when I give the word. They're closing in on us, trying to set up a cross fire. If I can take out the ones on this side, we can run for the mountains. Maybe we can lose them in the dark."
  
  "Okay," she answered, unsure.
  
  I wasn't as confident as I sounded. These men were experts at their trade. Sutter's professional handling of the car would have won approval from Mario Andretti. I should have realized Sutter was suckering me into a trap when he simply didn't give up, but hindsight is always 20–20. The present situation demanded that I call a few shots in advance and do it accurately for a change.
  
  I counted fifteen more heartbeats before I got my chance. A man became careless as he crouched and ran from a clump of scrub oak toward a fair-sized salt cedar. Wilhelmina spoke twice with great authority. The man took two more steps before realizing he was dead.
  
  This brought his partner out of hiding. He should have provided covering fire; it was his fault his friend lay dead on the desert sand. He tried to vindicate the death and signed his own death warrant in the process. Three slugs ripped through his chest and throat, spinning him around. His fingers must have jammed the trigger as he fell. The M-16 fired off its entire clip machine gun style.
  
  The two deaths opened up the escape route for Marta and me. Taking her hand, I opened the door on my side of the car and pulled her out. The others fired with skill and deliberation, as if potting at targets on the firing range. This added to my conviction that they were professionals. Amateurs would have been spraying lead all over the landscape. While that would be dangerous, it was less dangerous than having cool, calculating men triggering off round after round.
  
  Marta yelped again. A red welt appeared on her arm and a river of blood flowed. She tried to stop and touch the wound. I kept pulling her along. If we'd stood still for even a second, we'd have been as dead as the dodo. I scooped up the first man's M-16 on the run, spun, and dropped to one knee, seeking out the dark patch on the side of a low hill where I'd seen orange muzzle flashes. Flipping the selector to full automatic, I emptied the clip into the most likely terrain. I was rewarded with an ear-piercing shriek of agony. The man might be dead or not. There wasn't any way of telling, not that it mattered much. As long as Sutter hid off to our right and the fourth man had his M-16 firing, they were our primary concerns.
  
  As if on cue, Sutter opened up with his.38 again. The reports were deeper, throatier, more powerful than the.223s. But if I had to be hit by one of the slugs, I'd pick the.38 every time. It didn't enter a body and begin to tumble, ripping and shredding internal organs, as the M-16 round did. And at this distance, the.223 still carried almost half again as much energy as the larger, more ponderous.38 slug.
  
  What it really came down to was not wanting any of that lead ventilating me.
  
  "Come on," I shouted at Marta. "We've got to put a lot of distance between us and them. They're not nice people."
  
  She crouched just inches away from the second man I'd shot. The first bullet had hit him in the eye and blown away the back of his skull in a bloody shower. It was an ugly sight. The sucking dry sand avidly drank all the blood, leaving behind only the gray brains. I shook Marta hard to get her moving again.
  
  "Let's run," I suggested.
  
  "He's dead." Her voice was like that of a zombie, dull and monotone. I shook her again.
  
  "Do you want to look like he does? Those men are trying to kill us. Now follow me, dammit, follow me!"
  
  I started down an arroyo, protected on both sides by the high banks. Fifty feet down the dry river bed I turned and looked to see if Marta had shaken off enough of her shock to obey. She had. Satisfied she would follow along for the time being, I set off with a long-legged lope, trying to put as much desert between the gunmen and us as possible in as short a time as I could.
  
  "Nick," she sobbed a few minutes later. "I can't go on. I… I'm so dizzy." She stumbled and fell face-first onto the sand. I went to her side and rolled her over. I sucked in my breath when I saw the flowing crimson stain on the front of her dress. I immediately hated myself for thinking she was trying to hold me back through some petty weakness on her part.
  
  The head wound sluggishly trickled blood, but it was just a scratch. The bullet track on her right arm had already coagulated. The dampness on her blouse continued to spread with frightening speed. I ripped open her blouse, knowing this was no time for modesty. A bullet fragment had underscored both her breasts leaving an eleven inch wound. It wasn't serious, but she had lost enough blood to weaken her. I ripped several strips from the bottom of her blouse and bandaged her as best I could. I wished then I'd had the foresight to bring along the roll of gauze bandage used to hide my hands and face. Leaving it behind had been an act of defiance on my part. Discard it, discard my hidden identity as Richard Burlison.
  
  "Nick," she said weakly, blinking her eyes. "What happened? I remember running and running, but my lungs burned too much. I fell, got up, and then…"
  
  "Just stay still," I ordered. "You picked up a third bullet back in the fracas. We'll rest here for a few minutes, but you'll have to get moving again soon or they will definitely find us. We can't fight them all off."
  
  "I can't move, Nick. My knees feel like they've turned to rubber. Leave me. Go and get help."
  
  "Help?" I laughed harshly. "There isn't any. If I leave you behind, you'll never be seen again. These are professionals. Your body would vanish off the face of the earth."
  
  "Then save yourself," she said nobly.
  
  "Sorry, but that's not part of my orders," I lied. "Protecting you rates high on the list of things to get done." Those words did more for her than any medicine could. She brightened and leaned forward, resting her bloody head against my arm.
  
  "Thanks, Nick. I know you're lying. Remember, I worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency for a couple years. Their agents have the same orders as you do. Mission first, everything else second. You could leave me and no one would ever say a thing to you about it."
  
  "Staying alive — both of us — is my mission right now."
  
  She started to say something, but I cut it off by clamping my hand over her mouth. I'd heard a sound that didn't fit into the normal desert nightlife pattern. Straining hard, I listened for it again. I heard rock tumbling against rock.
  
  "They're coming. Close, too. Just stay here in the shadows, and they won't find you. I'm going to take the war to them and be back for you before you know it."
  
  She shivered as she shrank back into the cold sand embankment. Because of the dirt and grit on her face and hands, she melted into the landscape as well as if she had on camouflage makeup. I scrambled up the side of the arroyo and dropped to my belly, studying the upstream area, waiting for the men tracking us.
  
  "They have to be nearby," said one voice. "I'm still finding spots of blood."
  
  "Not so loud. The sound carries a long way in the desert," came a second voice.
  
  Neither voice belonged to Harold Sutter. That surprised me. After the breakneck battle on the road, I figured he'd want to be in on the kill. Perhaps he was injured in the last crash, not that it mattered. The two men out there were my primary concern. They stood between me and continued life.
  
  "No more blood," said the first voice. "Maybe they've bandaged the wound."
  
  "Which one was shot? If it's the chick, we could be in for a lot of trouble. But if it's the man, we stand a better chance of offing both of them fast."
  
  "I know she got hit at least once. Never saw him react. Where do we go now?"
  
  "Keep on downstream unless we find some evidence they've circled back on us."
  
  "That wouldn't do them any good. Not with her back there."
  
  I listened intently, wondering who they were talking about. They didn't give me any more clues to the identity of the mysterious woman. Both men fell silent, slowly following the trail Marta and I had left in the arroyo. If I'd had more time, I could have disguised the trail, left false leads, done many things to slow their progress. But time worked against me now.
  
  Both men came into view. I resisted the temptation to dispatch both of them with quick shots from Wilhelmina. This would have to be as silent as I could make it. They had warned me of others not too far distant. I didn't want a potential army of assassins swarming over the banks of the arroyo simply because I got careless.
  
  The Luger vanished back into its shoulder holster as Hugo slid from his sheath and pressed solidly into the palm of my hand. I moved the hilt of the knife a little, positioning it properly so that the blade was lightly held by thumb and forefinger, the butt end of the knife shoved hard into the heel of my hand. This gave maximum versatility with both point and edge while not cramping my hand if the fight took longer than I expected.
  
  The first man passed less than five feet from where I lay atop the sandy overhang. The second man followed several yards behind. When he had passed my position, I rose up off the cold ground, gathered my feet under me, and launched myself.
  
  Hugo slashed his throat from side to side. He gurgled obscenely, pink froth boiling from the second mouth now grinning from the front of his neck. He tensed, thrashed in my steely grip, and then sagged down, limp and dead. I gently lowered him, not wanting to make even the slightest noise.
  
  It seldom works that way.
  
  The other man turned, saw the situation, and fired. The bullet whizzed past my ear, causing me to involuntarily duck. He would have fired a second shot into my guts if my trained reactions hadn't operated without my conscious thought.
  
  My arm came back and snapped forward, Hugo tumbling in the air toward his target. The needle-sharp point of the stiletto penetrated the man's chest, some of the force lost when the blade raked across a rib. The man's fingers went numb, and he let the rifle slide from his grip. Stupidly, he looked down at the hilt of the knife growing from his chest like some deadly blossom. He clutched the handle and pulled Hugo free, falling onto his face like a sawed-through tree toppling to the ground.
  
  I retrieved my knife and resheathed him along my forearm, then searched both men. Disgusted, I found nothing to identify them or their employer. They were professionals, just like the one I'd killed at the deserted house while following Sutter before. Picking up one of the M-16s and taking the clip from the other, I went back to the spot where I'd left Marta.
  
  She slept, snoring gently. I didn't want to awaken her but knew we had to be moving again. That single shot had alerted the others back at the road. They might think one of their killers had been successful, but when the two men failed to report back with their success, it wouldn't be long before more killers followed.
  
  I looked around, wondering where we could hole up. We were in the foothills of the Manzano Mountains, not far from the test site used by Project Eighth Card. I didn't want to blunder onto the base, however, and alert the Security Police. Getting out of their clutches would be easy if I compromised my cover. But Hawk wouldn't like that, and it reduced my chances for success. Besides, things were taking a turn for the better. I didn't think I would have any trouble getting back to town now and making Sutter betray himself.
  
  "Marta, wake up," I said, shaking her. She winced and pulled away.
  
  "Don't wanna get up. Too early. Sick. Hurt."
  
  "Marta!"
  
  Her eyes opened painfully, took a second to focus, then she grimaced. "Nick? Is it all over? I had this wretched dream about you being killed. It was like in that movie Bonnie and Clyde. I saw the bullets moving in slow motion through your head. You danced around even though you were dead. It was horrible!"
  
  She broke down, crying bitter tears into my shoulder again. I didn't have the time to waste on her runaway emotions. I shook her so hard her teeth rattled.
  
  "Quiet! I got rid of the two following us, but there are others back there. Possibly an army of them. But if we hurry, we can get away before they miss those two."
  
  "You have one of their rifles," she said, her mind still unable to come to grips with the situation.
  
  "Never leave a weapon behind. Or ammunition," I said. "Better to use their own guns against them than to leave the discarded guns where they fall." I didn't bother telling her how I'd come to possess the M-16 and the two clips of ammunition. Marta drifted in a limbo of shock. I should never have allowed her to come along, but I hadn't thought the going would get this rough.
  
  "We can find a cave in the mountains," she said, her mind jumping from topic to topic. "We can barricade the opening and you can use the rifle to hold them off until help comes."
  
  "A good idea," I said. "Show me this cave." I didn't want to burden her with the idea that the Seventh Cavalry wasn't likely to come trotting up at the last instant to rescue us. That happened in the movies, but all too seldom in real life to be counted on as a likely solution to our problem. Still, I felt confident now that we'd manage to elude the others behind us.
  
  I watched the diamond-hard points of stars in the constellations overhead wheel around the heavens. Every footstep weighed a ton, and the distance we actually walked amounted to less and less. I ended up carrying Marta in a fireman's carry, the rifle held in my right hand for immediate use. The mountains surrounded us as I hiked through a low pass. Behind lay the slopes containing our wrecked car and the carnage left by the firefight. Ahead was the easternmost edge of the Eighth Card test range. I had vague memories of Marta saying this part was used for some sort of solar power equipment, though I hadn't paid much attention at the time. It hadn't seemed important.
  
  Finding a cave in the rocky hills proved easier than I'd thought. I put Marta down, my jacket pillowing her head from the hard rock. She slept or had gone into a coma, I didn't know which. Bone-tired, I sat with my back against a large boulder and studied the terrain below. No movement betrayed trackers, but that meant nothing. In top form, I could have walked up the side of the hill in broad daylight and not been seen. The men intent on eliminating us might not be as skillful, but I didn't want to bet on that.
  
  I dozed off, only to come awake, gun in firing position, when Marta sneezed. Looking at the woman did things to me, but this was neither the time nor the place.
  
  "You awake?" I asked.
  
  "Hmmm, yeah, I guess so," she mumbled sleepily. "What's happened? I remember being in the arroyo and stumbling. You said something and then, nothing."
  
  I told her about the all-night trek to get here. Less than an hour before sunrise, the heavens were still unsure whether to retain the velvet blackness of night or to assume the brilliant blue mantle of the daytime desert sky. With little vegetation to retain the heat throughout the night or to absorb it during the sunny day, the temperature extremes were surprisingly great. The difference between night and day felt greater than the difference between summer and winter in Southern California. The desert wasn't the sort of place where I wanted my bones bleached in the day and frozen solid at night.
  
  "We've got to keep moving, or they'll eventually find us," I told Marta.
  
  "Maybe they've given up."
  
  "Doubtful. They want us — bad. They didn't seem the types to easily quit, either. If we can make the solar power station beyond the next rise, we might be able to find a telephone. I can call my superiors and take care of matters in a hurry."
  
  "You're sure Sutter's the one?"
  
  "I was until I overheard two of them talking." I didn't mention I had killed them. "They were frightened of a woman. They obviously took their orders directly from her, but they didn't mention her name."
  
  "A woman?" mused Marta. "I couldn't guess who it might be. The only woman working on the project is Rich's assistant, Anne Roxbury. I couldn't imagine her being the mastermind behind any espionage plot."
  
  "I agree." I shifted position and straightened out cramped legs. "She's even more unlikely a suspect than Sutter, but he…" I cut off in midsentence. The gleam of a flashlight had alerted me to a man less than a hundred yards downhill. "Back into the cave."
  
  "But there might be snakes."
  
  "They'll be slow moving in this cold," I said. "The men down there are anything but slow, and their bullets are mighty hot."
  
  I steadied the M-16 in the palm of my left hand, bracing my body against a large boulder. Squeezing the trigger gently, I felt the gun buck slightly, a brass cartridge sailing off to my right. The clatter of the spent brass was almost as loud as the cry coming from the lips of my target. I watched him roll down the hill, dead.
  
  The air above my head exploded, rock fragments stinging the back of my neck. A fusillade of bullets from a dozen rifles shattered the stillness of the night. I saw the muzzle flashes like dozens of poisonous flowers blooming orange and deadly.
  
  I fired with deliberation, picking each target carefully. Perhaps one bullet in five found flesh. Not enough. The clip emptied, I ejected it and slammed in the other one taken off the dead body of an earlier stalker.
  
  "We're in a tight fix, Marta," I said. "There are too many of them. I want you to get away. Get to the solar power station and call the base Security Police. I'll try to give you enough covering fire so they won't notice you're gone."
  
  "I won't leave you, Nick."
  
  "If you don't, we'll both be corpses before sunrise. This is our only chance. When the sun comes up, they'll be able to see clearly and box us in. We won't have a ghost of a chance then. But now…" I let my voice trail off, wanting her to make the decision on her own — as long as it was the right one.
  
  "Alright, Nick, I'll do it."
  
  I kissed her quickly, then hefted the M-16. "I knew you would. Get ready, now, go!"
  
  I fired faster, the slugs kicking up dancing spires of dust in front of a half dozen riflemen. I heard a rumble and felt a small cascade of rocks against my back. Her scrambling feet had dislodged the stones. I continued my blistering barrage until the slide locked open, the last round fired. I tossed the useless rifle aside and pulled out my faithful Wilhelmina. The feel of the butt in my hand was almost sensual, the action strong and precise as shell after shell fired. More of those 9mm rounds found targets than had the ones I'd fired through the.223 M-16. This Luger P.08 might have been around since 1908 but it was reliable enough to bring down target after target at a hundred yards.
  
  All good things must end. I ran out of ammunition and left Wilhelmina hungering for more. Holstering the gun, I pulled out Hugo and tried to do a sneak to my right along the side of the mountain. It didn't work.
  
  I found tiny puffs of dirt and rock marking a boundary I couldn't cross. The bullets came close enough to tell me that I might have perished, but they weren't ready to kill — yet. I stopped, slid Hugo into his sheath, and straightened up, arms over my head. It was time to see if my surrender tactic worked this time.
  
  "Okay, you've got me!" I called out. "Don't shoot."
  
  The way the men came after me was impressive. Alternate echelon formation, half always covering the advance of the other half, they moved quickly, efficiently up the slope. A ring of death-giving M-16 bores assured my continued cooperation. I saw no way in hell of either fighting back or eluding my captors. All I had left was talk.
  
  "Where to, my good friends?" I said cheerfully. If one would anger, a slim chance existed for a quick fight, a new rifle, and a few extra shots fired. None of the men moved. "What about it, you sons of bitches? Don't you do anything without your nursemaid telling you?" Not even a flicker of muscle betrayed these men. They were hard, competent, deadly.
  
  "Mr. Nick Carter, do not think to enrage my men. They rise above your puny taunts."
  
  The use of my name, as well as the soft, oily-smooth female voice swung me around. Uphill stood a woman dressed in an iridescent green Oriental-style gown. Her face remained in shadow as she carefully made her way down the side of the hill. Each tiny foot precisely located the most solid spot before moving to the next, lower rock. When she stood in front of me, I saw she was barely five feet tall.
  
  My mind seethed as I tried to match the delicately boned Oriental face, those sloping almond-shaped eyes, and the patrician nose with a picture in an AXE dossier I had happened across a long time ago during an enemy agent orientation session.
  
  "You do not recognize me, N3?" she said sibilantly, a smirk marring the perfection of her face.
  
  "How can I forget Madame Lin, the foremost of our People's Republic of China friends?"
  
  "Very good, Mr. Carter," she congratulated. "Your memory serves you well. It is a pity such brilliance must be snuffed out like a candle flame in a typhoon."
  
  "Why is that? Because I have evidence that the sabotage on Project Eighth Card can be laid directly at the doorstep of the Social Affairs Department?"
  
  "You surmise that because of my presence, Mr. Carter. My organization has been most thorough in covering any hint that this is a Chinese mission."
  
  "That's not true, Madame Lin," I said, stalling for time. If Marta reached the solar power station, the SPs could arrive in less than ten minutes. I had to stay alive at least that long. "My investigation — and simple logic — told me the Chinese were responsible for Eighth Card's problems."
  
  "Indeed?" Madame Lin said, smiling benignly. I didn't let her innocent appearance fool me. I knew her For a cold-blooded killer who stopped at nothing to further her country's aims — if those aims happened to coincide with her own.
  
  "Sure," I said, bravado tingeing my words. "The Russians appeared the odds-on favorites for sabotage at first. They have the nuclear delivery edge, in spite of our Trident submarines. They could knock out every single land-based launch site and, since they have numerical superiority on us, continue to blast away until all the U.S. glowed a radioactive blue. But that edge vanishes if Eighth Card develops a potent anti-ICBV laser cannon."
  
  "Your superiority with the Trident submarine is evanescent, too," said Madame Lin. "Our Soviet comrades are working on a computer capable of listening to undersea noises, sorting out the natural from the artificial and pinpointing even the most quiet of submarines. Coupled with their satellite observations, you are most vulnerable."
  
  "That's what gave you away," I said, sweat beading on my forehead. She remained implacable, unyielding. I fenced verbally for some slight advantage and found none. "You shouldn't have knocked down the Russian spy satellite. For the small leverage that gave the Russians in the SALT negotiations, it hardly seemed worth it."
  
  "I have been advised that the destruction of that satellite was of paramount importance, Mr. Carter. It spied on our troop movements through Manchuria to the Amur River. A quick drive to the sea will yield much valuable land, including the town of Vladivostok. Of itself, the city is unimportant. Psychologically its loss will greatly demoralize the Soviets."
  
  "You couldn't attempt such a massive land grab unless the Russians were busy elsewhere, like fighting an all-out atomic war with the United States."
  
  "You have discerned the salient points of my strategy, Mr. Carter. I commend you."
  
  I wanted to glance at my wristwatch to see how long Marta had been gone. It seemed an eternity, but I thought it must be closer to fifteen minutes. Any time now the SPs would arrive.
  
  "It is cold out, Mr. Carter, and yet you sweat profusely. Could it be that you find my presence disconcerting?"
  
  "I hadn't expected to find China's top field agent out in the middle of the New Mexico desert. I suppose you were responsible for Burlison's death."
  
  "An unfortunate mistake, that," Madame Lin said, her voice carrying mock sympathy. "His death wasn't required for another few months. If he had been like the other scientists and remained in the observation bunker, the high power switching device that allows the laser to fire repeatedly in very short periods of time would have been stolen. He blundered across our agent as he worked on the carriage of the laser, trying to remove the switch. The magnitude of the error is shown by your presence, Mr. Carter. AXE only sends its top agents when requested by the President of the United States. This is a mark of distinction for me, N3. I pit myself against your country's best. I admit it required elaborate ruses to capture you, ruses that would otherwise have been unnecessary."
  
  "Doesn't the mutual trade pact and the diplomatic recognition between China and the U.S. mean anything?" I asked. "We are treating fairly with you. Why does the Social Affairs Department still send spies into America?"
  
  Madame Lin chuckled softly. "Mr. Carter, I am not the naive fool you take me for. The spying between our countries has not diminished because of this new era of camaraderie. Rather, it has intensified. More spies clog up the T'ien An Men Square than ever. We find them posing as repairmen working on the Forbidden City. They lay brick along the Great Wall. They work in junks in Shanghai harbor. Everywhere we find them, drinking Coca-Cola and spying on us. We only reciprocate. New freedoms mean greater opportunities for learning, is that not so?"
  
  I remained silent. I had no way of knowing if she spoke the truth. It did have the ring of sincerity, however, and it sounded like the type of foreign policy the U.S. had been pursuing since World War II.
  
  "You appear distraught, Mr. Carter. Could it be you await the return of the dark-haired woman?"
  
  I retained my outward icy calm. Madame Lin enjoyed toying with me, just as a cat plays with a trapped mouse.
  
  "Oh, yes, Mr. Carter. She was captured less than five minutes after she left the safety of your little fortress in the mountainside. My assistants have taken her to the solar power station. Please accompany me to that area. I think you will find the experimental setup most enlightening."
  
  With five cold rifle muzzles poking into my back and sides, I could only agree.
  
  "You're a gracious hostess, Madame Lin. May many guests always reside in your home."
  
  "You have mastered the art of the Chinese curse, Mr. Carter. I assure you that you will live in interesting times for the remainder of your life."
  
  She spun and went up the side of the hill as swiftly as a gazelle, but with none of the bouncing. She glided like a ghost, her legs and feet hidden by the hem of her brilliant green dress. Tired, I scrambled up the mountainside after her as best I could. Using the time to assess my chances of escape, I decided to wait for a while. Wilhelmina was empty and only Hugo remained as a positive factor on my side of the equation. He would have to be used as a last resort.
  
  Besides, I had to find out if Madame Lin had lied about capturing Marta. Deep down inside I knew the Oriental never lied when she could inflict even a small psychic wound on an enemy with the truth.
  
  Cresting the hill, I stared across the brown expanse of desert. A false dawn turned the eastern sky into a dull gray flecked with pink patches of clouds. The wind that had chewed through to my bones all night long had died down to a gentle whisper. All around me the animals began to stir, hunting and being hunted. I identified more with the prey than the predator at the moment.
  
  "Do you see the tall structure, Mr. Carter? That is known as a power tower. Surrounding it for several acres on the north are Fresnel lenses that track the sun, hoard every single ray of light, then concentrate and reflect a beam on one small portion of the tower. A huge boiler is placed at the focus, steam is generated, and turbines spin. Electricity is manufactured. Let us examine this marvel of your science more closely."
  
  Madame Lin gracefully climbed into a four-wheel-drive jeep and motioned me to join her. It would have been cozy except for the M-16 resting against the back of my neck, ready to fire through my brain if I made a false move.
  
  The driver expertly took the turns down the side of the mountain. Although he jostled us repeatedly, he retained complete control. We made good time to the power tower, as Madame Lin had called it. The structure rose upward more than twelve stories. From the distant mountaintop, it hadn't seemed this large. I chalked up the deceptive size to the clear desert air and the lack of any other structure to use as a comparison.
  
  "Elevators will take us to the top, Mr. Carter," Madame Lin said. "Up there Mrs. Burlison awaits us."
  
  The sound of her laughter grated on my ears like fingernails across a chalkboard. My guards shoved me into the elevator where another of the Oriental's men worked the controls. He had broken through the exterior panel and had crossed wires inside, for what purpose I couldn't guess. I had the dreadful premonition I would find out all too soon. Madame Lin wasn't the type to expend effort needlessly.
  
  The speed of the elevator caused my knees to buckle slightly. I still hadn't recovered fully from the nightlong chase through the desert. I kept a keen lookout for an opening. Hugo still rested in position and could kill in a split second, but the guards were too attentive. Three of them watched me at all times.
  
  "Here we are, Mr. Carter. The top of the world, one small step away from the sun!"
  
  Dawn brightened the horizon. Twelve stories below my feet motors purred and moved the giant lenses toward the spot where the sun would appear. The mirrors behind the massive lenses all pointed directly at the spot where I stood.
  
  "Yes, Mr. Carter, "said Madame Lin. "In less than fifteen minutes this entire area will be bathed in the loving rays of the sun, but concentrated a million-fold. A temperature of over one thousand degrees Fahrenheit will push the fluids inside this vessel past their boiling point. But you will not care about that. You and your meddling friend will long since have been reduced to powdery ash."
  
  I kicked backward, my foot smashing squarely into the guard's kneecap. I felt the sick crunch but I was already spinning to one side, not gloating. A fist drove into the side of my head, but I ignored the flash of stunned pain and kicked out again. This guard collapsed in a pile of pain, his groin ruined forever. The third guard used his rifle butt to drive me to my knees, but it was Madame Lin herself who stopped my abortive escape.
  
  A small pistol pointed directly at my head, but that barrel looked as large as a firehose to me.
  
  "No more foolishness, Mr. Carter. I have a pressing engagement in Albuquerque, and the time allotted to removing you is gone. Stand, please, and allow my men to manacle you."
  
  I had no choice. I could die then with a lead slug in my belly or I could prolong my life a few more minutes by allowing them to chain me. They fastened iron cuffs around both my wrists, the long chain connecting them fastened to a ring high over my head. A quick loop of chain held my feet to the platform to prevent me from climbing the links around my wrists.
  
  "Bring the woman."
  
  "Marta!" I cried. She looked disheveled, her hair matted and dirty. The wound on her forehead had opened again, and blood ran into her left eye. She had an ugly bruise on one cheek, and her arm hung limp and useless at her side.
  
  "Nick, they got you, too? I was afraid they had," She turned angry eyes at Madame Lin and some of the woman's spirit flared out. "I hope you burn in hell."
  
  "No, my dear," said Madame Lin mockingly. "It is you who will burn. Here. Now. When the sun rises above the horizon, the forest of lenses and mirrors below will concentrate a heat beam on this very spot." She tapped the stainless steel plate with the muzzle of her small pistol. "And you will both vanish from the earth. A neat, elegant solution to the disposal of unwanted corpses." Turning to me, Madame Lin said, a sneer marring her lovely face, "I can't say it has been a pleasure, N3, but your death will enhance my prestige greatly."
  
  "I'm glad someone will gain from my death," I replied. "But you can't possibly profit from her death. "I glanced over at Marta. She had been chained in the same fashion as I.
  
  "She is an annoyance, nothing more. I admire your gallantry, Mr. Carter, but it will not save her."
  
  Madame Lin clapped her hands. The thugs she had surrounding her all ran for the elevator around the side of the power tower. She bowed low, her hands clasped in front of her body.
  
  "May your ancestors smile at your presence, Mr. Carter."
  
  "May you choke on your words!"
  
  She laughed gently and went to the elevator, which whisked her to the ground twelve stories below my feet.
  
  "Is what she said the truth, Nick?" asked Marta. "Will all those mirrors fry us?"
  
  "Just as soon as the sun comes up," I said, swallowing hard. I imagined I could see the leading edge of the sun poking over the distant mountaintop. I had always greeted the new day with enthusiasm and hope. That didn't happen now. I desperately wished night would hang on a few minutes longer. "Don't worry. I'll get us free."
  
  Hugo jumped into my hand, but I knew how impossible it was to force the locks on my manacles with the point of the knife. As long as I was bound in this fashion, I couldn't get the proper leverage. I needed a slender, flexible piece of metal to use as a picklock. Dragging the edge of the stiletto along the stainless steel plate of the boiler behind me produced a long, jagged metal burr. I cut my fingers as it came loose from the boiler.
  
  "I can get us free in a couple minutes with this," I said, already slipping the metal strip into the lock and working it around against the tumblers.
  
  But I didn't have a couple minutes. The sun rose in the east, and a hot blast from the focusing mirrors below blistered my face.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Seven
  
  
  
  
  I worked frantically, my fingers turning slick with sweat, but the loud snick of the lock on ray left wrist told me I was almost there. Another searing blast of heat singed my eyebrows. Panicked, I got free, but there wasn't time to free Marta. The disk of the sun was already halfway over the horizon.
  
  When I saw the thin, wispy clouds dragging their tendrils across the face of the sun, I almost decided to believe in luck. Their presence gave me the precious seconds I needed to kick free of the chains on my feet and get to Marta. Knowing the cloud cover wouldn't last long, I undid her leg irons and used her like a football tackling dummy.
  
  She screamed as we swung free, supported only by her arms. But I was in time. The eye-searing lance of finely tuned light hammered into the stainless steel plate just inches away from us. The radiation caused my shirt to smoulder as I held Marta to one side like some human pendulum. The stainless steel sliver snapped in one lock as I used it. I had to get a better grip on the remaining portion and tend to the other lock. It opened reluctantly, and I carried the woman away from the heat ray, her freed chain racing up and over the beam before crashing to the platform behind us.
  
  The falling chain passed through the heat ray and turned into a viscous puddle, but we were safely away from the boiler. That's what counted.
  
  "I never thought that kiddie rhyme worked," I said, wiping the sweat from my forehead and swatting at the smouldering spots on my shirt.
  
  "What kiddie rhyme?"
  
  "Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day. I don't know if those clouds mean rain, but they certainly came back on the right day. Couldn't have delayed the power beam at a better time."
  
  The sun rested on the horizon, a perfect sight-picture for a gunsight. The fleecy strands of clouds boiled away in its fiery presence. Just a few short feet away the stainless steel plate began to glow cherry red. In a little while, I knew it would turn white hot, almost to its melting point.
  
  "Let's get out of here," I said. "Unless you have some marshmallows to roast."
  
  "Don't joke, Nick," she said weakly, clinging to me for support. I held her for a minute, then gently guided her toward the elevator. Madame Lin's tinkering with the elevator kept it on the ground refusing to answer the call button. Maintenance rungs descended just inside the shaft. Not as elegant as riding, perhaps, but just as sure. The heat boiling off the top of the power tower lent speed to our descent to the ground.
  
  "Do you really want to do this, Nick?" Marta asked, concern in her eyes. She had the head wound stitched up and a large gauze patch covered the bruise one of Madame Lin's henchmen had given her. It amazed me how good she looked, in spite of the sundry cuts and abrasions.
  
  "I'm on the right track, Marta. I've got to push this to the limit. Only returning to the project disguised as your husband will betray the man responsible for Richard's death. I'm sure Madame Lin has had time to tip off her spy that I'm dead. The innocent ones won't react to seeing me again — her spy will."
  
  "You still think it's Sutter?"
  
  I shook my head. "It's possible. I admit he's been acting suspiciously, but the entire desert chase felt wrong. I was too caught up in the fight at the time to analyze why it didn't seem right. The scene outside Sutter's house was too pat. Madame Lin admitted she had worked hard to set me up in that trap. Who passed the envelope? I didn't see anyone, but at the time I thought they might be in the shadows. The possibility exists that there wasn't anyone at all, that it was nothing more than another piece of cheese in the rat trap."
  
  "Was it Sutter?"
  
  "I never saw the man's face. I thought it was Sutter because I wanted to believe I'd solved all the problems and wrapped this case up with a nice, neat bow. It could have been anyone who got into Sutter's car and led us for a merry chase into that ambush. It's hard to believe Sutter could have driven like that," I finished with some asperity.
  
  "Wouldn't Sutter report his car missing, if it hadn't been him?"
  
  "He did," I said. "I checked, but chances are good that he would have reported it stolen even if he had used it himself. A convenient way of covering his tracks. No," I said glumly, "I'll have to be more clever, but the shock of seeing me should tip the guilty party's hand."
  
  "You hope. It might get you killed."
  
  "Doll," I said, taking her into the circle of my arm, "in this business anything can get you killed." I kissed her and then pushed her away reluctantly, adding, "You rest now. I'll try to be back early this evening."
  
  "I'll be waiting, Nick."
  
  The look burning in her eyes told me what she meant. I hurried out, got into the car, and drove expertly to the laboratory. Wishing I had the souped-up car that had been wrecked the night before, I chafed and cursed as car after car passed me on the freeway. Still, I arrived at the laboratory's main gate in record time, produced my security badge, went through the rigmarole with the voiceprints and the handwriting analysis, and went in.
  
  This time I knew where to go. The brief sightseeing tour with Anne Roxbury had allowed me to completely map out the inside of the compound. I went straight to «my» lab, finding Anne hunched over a remote terminal, inputting data to the main computer hidden in the bowels of its very own building a half mile distant.
  
  "Hi, Anne," I said, the words muffled by the bandages again in place over my face. I had pulled the gauze back from my fingers leaving them free. If anyone noticed these weren't the fingers of Richard Burlison, they would probably discount it — they certainly wouldn't mention it to a man who'd nearly lost his life in a fire.
  
  The blond woman looked up and smiled. "How are you, Richard?"
  
  "Good enough." She betrayed none of the tenseness I expected from a person told I'd been fried alive on the power tower. Anne Roxbury got crossed off my list of suspects.
  
  "We've got the big test on line for tonight. Want to stay around and watch?"
  
  "Big test? Which one's that?"
  
  "Which one, he says. The firing from Green River, of course."
  
  I worked through the sparse data and finally decided the laser cannon was to be tested on a real rocket coming through the atmosphere. The Green River, Utah, launch site usually impacted its rockets on White Sands Proving Grounds to the south. Even if the laser failed to knock down the missile, nothing of importance could be damaged on the vast desert test range.
  
  "When'll it go up?"
  
  "1830 hours. I've already alerted the State Police to be on the lookout for it and to discount any UFO sightings around that time. If Eighth Card connects, that baby'll make quite a flash overhead. The mock warhead is loaded with magnesium filings to make it apparent if we hit dead-on or not." The woman gloated over the efficiency of the weapon she had helped design and build. I put another checkmark beside her name as being trustworthy. People who engross themselves so totally in the success of a project don't sell out. It would be like selling out a part of themselves.
  
  "I want to talk to Sutter."
  
  Anne turned and looked at me while her teletype chattered wildly, digesting data and requesting more. She frowned and finally said, "He'll be by any second. Why not wait?"
  
  "Okay." I settled down in a swivel chair just as Sutter and Edward George came into the lab. Sutter's eyebrows shot up and he stopped dead in his tracks causing George to blunder into him.
  
  "Hey, Harold, watch it, will you?" said George. "How's it going, Richard?"
  
  "Not so bad. How are you today, Dr. Sutter?"
  
  "I… I'm fine."
  
  "You appear a little distraught," I pressed.
  
  "Nothing, just the pressure of this test. I didn't expect to see you today, that's all."
  
  "Why not? Yesterday, I was tired when I left but felt good. Why shouldn't I be back today?"
  
  "No reason. Your accident, the problems yesterday at the bunker. You're in better shape than I figured. Nothing. Come along, Rich. I want to discuss the test with you this evening. You, too, Ed."
  
  Edward George had stood by quietly, studying both Sutter and me. The byplay caused him to wrinkle his forehead, but he said nothing. When Sutter spun around and abruptly walked out, George fell in beside me, following.
  
  "The bums bother you at all, Rich?" he asked. "I've heard they can be some of the most painful of any type injury. Worse even than bad sunburn."
  
  "The burn and trauma unit at the University is the best this side of Brook Army Hospital," I said. "They fixed me up pretty good. Even have the use of my fingers back. Hardly burned." I didn't want to get into a long discussion with the man. I'd never heard Richard Burlison speak and knew nothing about the tempo of his speech, the way he phrased his thoughts, the all-important rhythm that becomes the hallmark of a person.
  
  "I don't know how a place like the University of New Mexico ever got such good stuff," he replied. "The funding for the important projects seldom gets out of committee up in Santa Fe."
  
  I nodded sagely, wondering if local politics was identical in all fifty states. It always sounded that way, to hear the gripes of the local citizens. But I had more pressing matters on my mind. Sutter nervously fluttered and primped as he went into a small lecture room. Getting him to break down and confess looked easier now than at any time in the past, but one discrepancy kept bothering me.
  
  I couldn't place this nervous, middle-aged, rotund man behind the wheel of that expertly driven car last night. He didn't have the steely nerves to drive like a Formula One racer.
  
  "This is the setup," he said, his voice calming down as he swung into a role that suited him. "Green River fires a Titan II missile, which arcs up to a height of 200 kilometers. As the missile reenters and the first touch of friction glow is observed by our sensors, the laser will lock in and begin tracking."
  
  "Heat-tracked?" I asked. "Why not radar?"
  
  Sutter looked at me curiously. "We don't have the satellite system up yet. You ought to know that."
  
  Edward George came to my rescue. "I think Richard means why not use a patch-through microlink from White Sands." He turned to me and explained. "The infrared sensor system is the best we could do for this test. The microwave linkage might break apart at a crucial moment. When the satellite-based radar units are put into orbit, we'll be able to maintain a continuous watch and pinpoint to fractions of a millimeter. And, of course, the military wouldn't spring for a ground-based unit here for just one test. The infrared tracker is part of Kring's experiment. He's giving it a try, and we get a tracking unit for free. Worked out nicely."
  
  I nodded my thanks, not wanting to talk more than necessary. Sutter rushed on with his own explanations.
  
  "We've got the laser set to cycle five times. If the first shot doesn't take out the incoming bird, the computer will recalculate and shoot four more times in a bracketing pattern like this." He used chalk on the board to trace out an X pattern. "This time the duration of the laser beam will triple. This will slice through the missile if it hits, rather than just punching a hole."
  
  "With the beam the size of a man's head, I find it hard to believe any contact with the missile won't bring it down."
  
  "True, but I think the two meter slashing motion might prove more effective in the long run, even though it requires larger capacitor storage." Gone was all of Sutter's nervous behavior. On familiar ground now, he lectured an interested audience. I frowned, wondering if I wasn't missing something important. Sutter obviously felt uncomfortable around me, and I attributed that to guilty knowledge of my "death." Now I wondered. I felt the same indefinable pride in this project that Anne Roxbury radiated. Harold Sutter lived and breathed for Eighth Card. Still, the alcoholism and the heavy gambling might compromise him.
  
  "Impact is at White Sands and recovery will be accomplished as quickly as possible. We should have the pieces for metallurgical study within a week. The crystallization of the metal near the beam entry point is going to be the most interesting."
  
  "Will you be able to do the material characterization works, Richard?" asked George. "Or would you rather I did it?"
  
  "I can do it okay," I said, not even knowing what he was asking. "If I have any trouble that Anne can't help me out with, I'll get you in to help finish it off."
  
  George nodded, pursed his lips, and settled back in his chair. He crossed his arms and said, "Harold, one last question. The turbulence in the upper atmosphere will attenuate the beam. I wanted to…" He launched into a highly abstruse discussion on the effect of the atmosphere on the laser beam as it licked outward to its target. I simply sat and listened, not understanding a single word and hoping neither man would ask for my opinion.
  
  I was rescued by Anne Roxbury. She entered the side door, saying, "Excuse me, Dr. Sutter. Could I talk with Dr. Burlison for a moment? It won't take long."
  
  Sutter was only too happy to get rid of me. Both George and Sutter began scribbling long, complicated mathematical formulas on the chalkboard. I quickly exited and stood in the hall next to the trim blond lab assistant.
  
  "Did you get the full course?" she asked. She pressed back against one of the thin metal partitions, fear in her eyes.
  
  "Let's go back to my office. I don't want to talk in the hallway." If I could spy through these walls, so could others. Only when we were in my office and the door had closed did I say, "Something's on your mind, Anne. Spill it."
  
  "You're not Richard Burlison."
  
  "An interesting speculation," I said slowly. "How did you come to that conclusion?"
  
  "Your hands."
  
  "They're not burned. I was lucky to escape with only slight blistering. They healed faster than my face."
  
  "That's not what I mean. You don't have the right scars."
  
  I held up my hands and studied them. Strong hands, hands capable of crushing the life from an unwanted sentry or breaking a stack of bricks. Feathery scars crisscrossed the backs of both hands from numerous knife cuts I'd received in more battles than I cared to remember.
  
  "Explain."
  
  "Rich and I were working on the X-ray generator in the next lab several months ago. It had a three-phase line, 220 volts. Instead of unplugging it, he just depended on the safety disconnect. It only disconnected one side of the power line, leaving the entire circuit alive with 110 volts. He shorted the line out with the edge of an aluminum plate."
  
  "So?"
  
  "So the backs of his hands were spattered with molten aluminum. He had tiny pockmark scars you don't have. At first I just pushed it out of my mind, but then I decided I couldn't just let it ride."
  
  "Have you told anyone else?"
  
  Anne shook her head, a shimmer of blond hair dancing around her oval face. "I guessed that you must be a government agent come here to check for some secrecy violation."
  
  "Why a government agent? I might be a spy trying to unravel all the secrets of Project Eighth Card. This is a golden opportunity to send in a ringer."
  
  "I thought about that. You have to be a government agent," she said positively. "Our government. The entry restrictions are too tough for a spy to get in by pretending to be a man wrapped up in a bandage. The voiceprint alone would trip you up — unless the different readings had been authorized by somebody high up."
  
  "Good thinking. And you're right. I work for one of the spook groups, one so secret you've probably never heard of it. The reason I'm impersonating Burlison is to stop the sabotage on Eighth Card."
  
  "And Rich?"
  
  "He died in the fire out at the bunker." I watched shock and disbelief cross the pretty woman's face. Either she was the best damned actress I'd ever seen or she was truly distraught over her boss' death. "Till now, only Marta Burlison has known. Will you cooperate with me until everything's cleared up?"
  
  I didn't bother to outline the alternatives to her. Anne would probably think I'd have her kidnapped and held at some government safe house. That was one way; if she wanted to go and tell the security guards about my identity right now, I would have to eliminate her. A short circuit in some electrical wiring can look accidental while being a premeditated method of execution. I'd used it in the past and didn't doubt I would employ it many times in the future. I held no animosity for this woman, but nothing could deter me from ridding the project of Madame Lin's resident spy.
  
  "Yes," she said, her voice choked and so low I barely heard her. "I'll do whatever you ask."
  
  "Good. I have reason to believe the spy is Harold Sutter."
  
  "Dr. Sutter?" Anne's eyes widened in surprise. "But he's been the director of the project since its inception. He lives, eats, and breathes Eighth Card."
  
  "And is addicted to the bottle and has heavy gambling losses," I finished.
  
  She lowered her eyes and clasped her hands together in her lap. "I've heard those things. Poor Dr. Sutter. He can't help himself. Honest, the drinking doesn't affect his work."
  
  "It provides the leverage for other powers to sway him into giving out vital information. Perhaps their hold over him is so great that he would kill a friend and colleague."
  
  "No! I've known Dr. Sutter for six years. I can't believe he's capable of killing anyone, even in self-defense."
  
  I didn't want to debate the point with her. I'd seen men and women twisted beyond recognition, doing heinous things, simply because one of the mind-control men from the other side knew which mental buttons to push. I didn't kid myself for a second. In their hands, even I could be turned against the United States. Drugs, diabolical electronic equipment, the most sophisticated techniques possible all chewed away at a man's brain until nothing but putty remained. They were expert at molding what was left. Sutter was vulnerable, Anne was vulnerable, I was vulnerable. But I also carried the time-honored hollow tooth with cyanide in it.
  
  Dead men don't turn traitor.
  
  "Men find strange reasons for justifying their behavior, "I told her. "But there's always the chance I'm wrong. Any information I might get could aid Sutter rather than condemn him."
  
  "You don't really think he's the one who killed Richard?"
  
  "I have every reason to believe he is," I said, remembering grimly who had called out the demolition team to destroy the bunker — while I was still in it. "But my gut level feelings aren't real proof. It's possible someone is trying to frame him. One or two things don't quite click."
  
  "The same someone who's done everything else?"
  
  I nodded. My eyes never left Anne's. I wanted to make certain she was honest about this. Trained actresses can study blood language, how to shift the eyes at the right instant for certain desired effects, even how to lie and seem truthful. But when this is done, other more subtle indicators show up. None did with Anne Roxbury.
  
  "I'll do what I can. Dr. Sutter's going to be with Ed for some time yet. I can help you get into his office. I… I know the combination to his safe."
  
  "How did you get that?" I asked, knowing only the project director and the head of security possessed those numbers. With classified information being stored there, it didn't pay to indiscriminately toss around the combination. The old governmental "need to know" applied, even to those with top secret Q clearances.
  
  "Promise this won't get Dr. Sutter into trouble?"
  
  "I couldn't care less about minor indiscretions. I'm after a spy and a murderer. But a breach of security might tell me a lot about the way Sutter normally behaves."
  
  "He… he was drunk once and couldn't get into his safe. He made me promise I wouldn't tell anyone that he'd given me the combination so I could open the safe for him. I don't think he remembered afterward or he would have had a security crew out to change the combination. He's usually quite good about things like that."
  
  I sighed. Harold Sutter might be as innocent as a newborn lamb where Burlison's death and the sabotage were concerned, but his ordinary workaday behavior was enough to give gray hair to any security chief. Sutter either had to dry out or be replaced on Project Eighth Card — after I'd finished.
  
  "You won't tell on him, will you? I'm just as guilty as he is for not reporting him to security."
  
  "I need information. This gives me a swift way of getting it. I won't mention you at all, Anne." The woman visibly relaxed, thinking this was the end of it. "Let's see what he has in that departmental safe of his, shall we?"
  
  We took the elevator to the second floor. Like most of the hallways in the building, the corridor outside Sutter's office was deserted. It took only a swift turn of a lockpick to open the door and slip into the office. The room looked little different from Burlison's office just off the laboratory upstairs. The lab planners obviously didn't think rank deserved much more in the way of luxury. The same style gunmetal gray desk stood bleakly in the center of the room, with the same type of swivel chair behind it. The only significantly different features in this office were the filing cabinet safes lining one wall and a crudely painted picture of a flower pot taped to the opposite wall.
  
  Anne noticed my attention and said, "Sutter's granddaughter did it. She's five."
  
  I barely heard her. My full attention centered on the safe. Anne furnished the combination as I spun the dial. In less than twenty seconds, the drawer slid open on well-oiled casters.
  
  "Look, Mister, uh," she started.
  
  "Just call me Richard Burlison. As far as anyone is concerned, that's my name."
  
  "Well, okay. Look, Richard, I'd better get out of here. This makes me nervous."
  
  "Go on. I won't be long."
  
  She closed the door behind her as she stepped into the hall. I watched the woman's shadow cross the frosted glass in the door, then vanish from my sight. I turned and dove into the files. Most had the red and white stripes around the borders to indicate classified information and reports. I had no real interest in any of this. Most was too technical for me to understand in the first place and, moreover, if I had really wanted the information, I'd've called Hawk and had it given to me, complete with deciphering by an AXE expert in physics. Only when I came to the bottom drawer did I find the things I wanted.
  
  A half-empty pint of cheap bourbon sloshed on top of a stack of papers. Even on the job Sutter tippled. Disgusted, I pushed aside the bottle and leafed through the documents. Sutter's finances suddenly sharpened with crystal clarity in my mind. He had taken out loan after loan from banks, deafulting on many. A few numbers and addresses, probably of loan sharks, were entered into a tiny notebook in Sutter's precise, small handwriting. Sutter's gambling debts totaled over eight thousand dollars. Not much for a man of his stature and position, but still considerable considering he had reached his credit limits with all the legal money lending institutions.
  
  This provided the motive for sabotage. Madame Lin had great wealth backing her. Harold Sutter might have been bled white by one of her agents posing as a gambler or loan shark. An easy jump between this and "All you have to do is stop a few Eighth Card tests and we forget what you owe." It had been done before with great success. I didn't doubt it would continue to be the sword of Damocles held over many other honest men's heads.
  
  I read with great interest the small diary Sutter kept. It confirmed my suspicions about his gambling. He lamented constantly his need to drink, his inability to stop due to the pressures on him from work and family. I gathered that his relationship with his wife was something less than pacific. He itemized his gambling losses, his loans, his debts. Whether gambling loss fed his need for drink or drinking caused his heavy losses, there was no easy way of telling. The diary and records I'd found indicated Harold Sutter had at least two monkeys on his back.
  
  Whether Madame Lin clung there, too, goading him along the path to betraying his country I still couldn't say. While Sutter had been open in his diary, I suspected a wide streak of paranoia in the man. Even if he thought this safe completely secure, he might not entrust evidence of his espionage here. After all, the security chief also had access to the safe, if necessary. The evidence I'd uncovered was damning but probably not enough to cause Sutter's dismissal. The laboratory had come to realize the widespread drinking problem among its workers and had a program to help them with the disease.
  
  I quickly scanned page after page, hoping for the clue I needed. I froze when I heard a shuffling sound from the direction of the door. A pudgy outline appeared against the frosted glass, and it wasn't the late Alfred Hitchcock's. Harold Sutter fumbled for the key to his office door.
  
  I was trapped, nowhere to go or hide in the windowless room.
  
  The door swung open.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Eight
  
  
  
  
  Frantically, I considered all possible avenues of escape and came up empty-handed. The best I could hope for was hiding in the knee-well of the desk and not being discovered. This wouldn't work too well if Sutter decided to sit at his desk. In this office, there wasn't much else to do.
  
  Scrambling on hands and knees, I crouched behind his desk, peering around the gray metal edge. With a surge, I could bowl him over and be gone. Little chance existed, however, that I would get away with it. The white bandages on my face branded me.
  
  The door opened three-quarters of the way, and I saw Sutter's paunch poke into the room. As I tensed for action, I heard a loud voice outside call, "Harold! Wait a second. Can I have a word with you?"
  
  Edward George.
  
  He joined Sutter, pulling the director's attention away from the interior of the room. I reached out and quietly pushed shut the bottom drawer of the safe, then half-stood and relocked it. I hunkered back down and strained to hear what George said to his superior.
  
  "I've been thinking about the cycle time. That gadget of Burlison's might require extra power and…"
  
  "You still want to tear into his little black box pretty bad, don't you, Ed?"
  
  "Well, yes, I do," the man admitted. "I don't know how he could come up with a solid state switching device that handles the incredible voltages used by the laser cannon. If I can get the circuitry diagrams for the box, I can rechannel part of the electricity lost in useless discharge and feed it through the switching device so that we might double the efficiency of the laser."
  
  "Can't see it."
  
  "Show me why not, will you? This is hot stuff. I don't believe we can't get more out of…"
  
  George reached out and took Sutter's arm, gently guiding him away from the door. I heaved a sigh of relief and crossed the office, pressing my face against the cool metal wall and peering out the crack between door and frame.
  
  George gestured emphatically while Sutter stood with his arms crossed, obviously not convinced by the man's pleas. Edward George finally grabbed Sutter's arm and dragged him into a small conference room at the end of the hall. I didn't hesitate. I left Sutter's office and ran for the elevator. Since George had just come down and the cage was at this floor, I didn't have to wait. The doors opened and swallowed me from sight immediately.
  
  I went back to the lab, looked around for Anne, and didn't find her. Going into the adjoining office, I closed and locked the door. Knowing the telephone on the desk received a periodic debugging by security prompted me to take the risk of calling Hawk.
  
  The phone rang seven times before he answered.
  
  "N3," I said, waiting.
  
  "Go ahead, Nick."
  
  I knew he had processed the voiceprint on that recognition codename and had come up with a green light. The AXE computer even checked background levels and harmonics to insure someone didn't tape record my voice and use that to gain access to Hawk. Sometimes the paranoia of my business got to me; at other times, like now, I was glad the precautions were taken. Few people can reach their boss as fast as I can get through to Hawk, thanks to the electronic and computer screening techniques used by AXE.
  
  "I've just been through Sutter's files. He not only drinks and gambles, he owes a lot of people a lot of money. Take this down." I recited the long string of names and numbers garnered from his diary and notebooks. "Check them out and let me know if any of them have a connection with Madame Lin."
  
  Silence. Time passed slowly, then, "No connection with Madame Lin we can uncover, Nick. The bank computer records are being scanned. One thing has turned up that might interest you. That house where Sutter and your mysterious man in black met belongs to Sutter's brother-in-law. And we think the man in black was Robert Woodward, the husband of Sutter's sister."
  
  I sank back into my chair, deep in thought. "Is this Woodward bailing out Sutter by paying off his gambling losses?"
  
  "From the evidence of his bank withdrawals, yes."
  
  "So this Woodward is protecting his wife — Sutter's sister — from the knowledge Sutter is out of control. Damn." The neat picture I'd constructed of Sutter taking money from Madame Lin fell totally apart with this information.
  
  "That seems the most likely scenario. If Sutter's gambling or drinking ever became public knowledge, the embarrassment to the family would be significant."
  
  "I can imagine the reaction of the public finding out one of the top government scientists gets drunk and blacks out."
  
  "Indeed?" said Hawk, I mentally pictured one of his eyebrows arching. I knew he entered that datum into the computer. While a case grew against Sutter, none of it helped me solve the problem of sabotage on Project Eighth Card.
  
  "What's the primary item invented by the scientists with Eighth Card that makes it so different from any other run-of-the-mill high-powered laser?" I asked.
  
  "That," said Hawk, "isn't easy to answer. The consensus in AXE's research section is the switching device Burlison designed. Without that, the entire laser is close to worthless. However, they've come up with many other unique items that might be counted as breakthroughs in laser technology."
  
  George had mentioned the switching device when he had stopped Sutter from entering his office and discovering me. I mentally reconstructed the conversation.
  
  "How many know of this switch? The inner workings, the basic circuitry, the nitty-gritty details about it?" I asked.
  
  "Only Sutter, now that Burlison is dead. It's a hand-built device. I can make an educated guess about what goes into it on the basis of their equipment and parts orders, but that's like asking what a building looks like knowing that a million bricks and forty loads of concrete have been delivered to the construction site."
  
  "Schematics exist for this switching device," I declared. "No one in the government ever allowed such knowledge to rattle around in a single man's head."
  
  "Right," confirmed Hawk. "But the schematics are at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base right now — the only set in existence. Not much chance of anyone lifting them from the middle of the most secure installation in the country. Do you have any evidence on Sutter pertaining to this matter?"
  
  "You just shot it all down," I told Hawk. "Everything can be explained more simply on the basis of his brother-in-law loaning money to pay the debts to remove family problems and to keep Sutter on the job. No trace of Madame Lin's fine touch in any of that. Hmmmm."
  
  My mind raced, reassembling the pieces of this gigantic jigsaw puzzle. The bolts removed from the carriage of the laser before the fire. Burlison's death. Harold Sutter's personal problems. Madame Lin. The ambush in the canyon after the superb driving by whomever had stolen Sutter's car. The laser switching device.
  
  "You did see him take money outside his house, just before you were ambushed," Hawk said.
  
  "I saw someone I thought to be Sutter. That entire scene could have been staged to make me think it was Sutter. What worries me is that Sutter just doesn't have the nerves to drive so expertly. The way he drinks, getting the key into the ignition would be a major accomplishment. And yet he seems to know I'm not Burlison. A dilemma." I thought about it a little longer, then asked, "Tell me, where is the solid state switching device installed in the laser?"
  
  Hawk grumbled as he punched up the new information from the AXE computer.
  
  "It is buried in the base of the laser carriage," he told me, carefully reciting from the printout so that he wouldn't make a mistake. "It can't be touched without first lifting the entire laser tube off the carriage."
  
  "That's all I needed to know," I said. "I've got to add a few more nails to the coffin, but I know who's responsible for Burlison's death, and it's not Sutter."
  
  "The President requires a speedy termination of this matter," Hawk said. The meaning was clear. Killmaster was to permanently eliminate the spy on Project Eighth Card.
  
  As I hung up, I heard Anne returning to the lab. I unlocked the office door and motioned her inside.
  
  "Did you get what you wanted?" she asked eagerly. Her cheeks were flushed with excitement.
  
  I nodded. "I was almost caught in the act, though. Edward George just happened by and decoyed Sutter away so I had the chance to slip away."
  
  She smiled, then averted her eyes guiltily. "I told Ed you were a government agent. I guess it was a good thing, huh? Otherwise, he wouldn't have known to stop Dr. Sutter when he did."
  
  "When Burlison was killed in the bunker, was George with the bigshots in the observation bunker?"
  
  She raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Why, no. He was out on the test range with one of the framing cameras."
  
  "Did the pictures he took come out alright?"
  
  "Of course."
  
  Again my house of cards came tumbling down. I worried over the facts again and discovered one tiny word I didn't understand.
  
  "What's a framing camera?" I asked.
  
  "It's a high-speed movie camera. It'll take thirty thousand frames a second."
  
  "And it's triggered automatically, not by hand?"
  
  She laughed at my ignorance. "It has to be triggered electrically. No human could respond fast enough."
  
  "So George really had nothing to do after the camera was loaded and ready to film?"
  
  "No, but what's that got to do with anything?"
  
  "Nothing, Anne. Don't worry about it. I think it's time I had a few words with Dr. Sutter." I watched her tense again. I said, "I've gathered enough evidence to convince me he's not the one responsible for what's been happening on Eighth Card. After all, he was with the senators and military brass in the observation bunker when Burlison was killed."
  
  She missed the implication of my flat statement. I didn't bother informing her of my new suspicions.
  
  "He's already left for the observation bunker. The computer is being programmed for the test this evening."
  
  "I'll go talk with him. It's urgent that I do it immediately. The test might be sabotaged again, and I need his expert advice on how to stop it." I left her in my office, eyes wide with horror at the idea of still another bit of sabotage being done on the laser.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  "What do you want?" Sutter snapped, his body hunched over the remote teletype terminal that programmed the computer controlling the laser cannon.
  
  "A few minutes of your time," I said.
  
  "Whoever you are, I'm very busy. This damn thing refuses to respond. But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"
  
  "You know I'm not Burlison? How long?"
  
  "Almost from the beginning. Everything about you was wrong. The little things as well as the big ones. You might fool most people around here who only casually knew him, but not me."
  
  "Why didn't you turn me in to security?"
  
  "You got into the compound. That surprised me no end, but if you got past the surveillance equipment the guards use, you had to be a government agent. It hardly matters what the government does anymore. To me, at least."
  
  "You figured I was after you for your drinking and gambling?" Sutter glumly nodded. "That's been noted in my report," I said, "but the sabotage to the project is my primary mission. What's this about having problems with the programming?"
  
  "I don't know," the man said, exasperated. He ran his hand through a thinning thatch of gray hair and shook his head. "I requested a check on the tracking program and it balked. It's locked up tighter than a drum on me."
  
  "You were using just the infrared tracker, right?" He nodded and I asked, "Is there another input? Perhaps from an override program? One that blocks off all the other input and supplies a different set of tracking coordinates?"
  
  "What do you know about this? Tell me!"
  
  "Check it through. I'll wait."
  
  His chubby fingers danced on the keys of the remote terminal. In less than five minutes, he turned back and said, "You're right. Somehow, the tracker will accept data only from another program. The IR tracking device is left out entirely. What is this?" he asked, reading off numbers.
  
  "It's a location in the sky not too far from the spot where the missile would reenter, isn't it?" From his startled reaction, I saw my guess was right. "Do you have any information on objects orbiting the earth? Like satellites?"
  
  "You think someone sabotaged the project again to blow up another satellite? This is outrageous!"
  
  I went to a nearby telephone, dialed a special number, and contacted a man in NORAD Headquarters deep under Cheyenne Mountain outside Colorado Springs.
  
  "Hello, Dvorkin? Fine, how about yourself? Good, good," I said, getting the pleasantries out of the way. "I need the orbital parameters for the Russian-manned space station. No, give them to the gentleman I'll be putting on the phone. He can understand the technical jargon better than I can."
  
  I passed the phone over to Sutter, who listened, the expression on his face one of disbelief. "Yes," he said. "Again, please. Got it." He hung up and looked at me, saying, "I don't have to run this through the computer. The laser is definitely locked on the manned Salyut space station the Russians put up. If Eighth Card is fired, we'll blow up six cosmonauts! And I can't stop the test! The damned computer keeps overriding my commands."
  
  A cold lump formed in the pit of my stomach. This would be the match lighting the fuse of World War III. No amount of diplomatic pleading would convince the Russians — or the rest of the world — that we had not deliberately destroyed a peaceful scientific mission. Even if the Russians hadn't been intent on starting another war, this backed them into a corner where they either fought or lost face.
  
  Madame Lin's devious mind was etched on every deadly detail of this dilemma.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  "There's no way you can break into the bunker," protested Sutter. "After what happened to Burlison, I ordered this one totally sealed. I have to break the programming and stop the test. That's the only way now."
  
  "Keep trying to reprogram," I told him. "But I'll go to the bunker and try to destroy the laser." The hurt look on his face said it all. The destruction of the Eighth Card laser was tantamount to slaughtering his firstborn son.
  
  But it had to be done to avert World War III.
  
  I jumped into a jeep parked outside and keyed the engine to life. The engine had barely caught when I floored the gas pedal and leaped ahead over the bumpy dirt road leading to the test site. As I drove, I stripped off the bandages from my face and hands. They served no purpose now. Sutter knew my identity, Anne Roxbury knew I wasn't Burlison — and the one man I had been trying to flush out had known who I was from the very start.
  
  Edward George had killed Burlison. When I appeared in the bandages, he knew the government had called in an undercover agent. I had to admire his acting ability earlier today. He had been decoying me away from Sutter's house last night. He had stolen the scientist's car and driven me into the ambush. George had covered his surprise at seeing me alive as well as anyone could have done. But his reactions hadn't seemed as important to me as Sutter's. I had been guilty of an elementary trap. Never accuse without all the facts. I'd been so sure Sutter was the spy I'd virtually ruled out the possibility of anyone else being involved.
  
  It had almost been fatal.
  
  I careened around the curves heading closer and closer to the squat concrete bunker in the distance. The dying rays of the sun glinted off the tube of the laser protruding from the top of the bunker. That laser aimed for the heavens — and the Salyut space station. I hoped Sutter had circumvented the diabolical computer program homing the laser in on the Salyut, but I couldn't count on it. Edward George had played it cagey so far. People on a winning streak tend to continue winning.
  
  Unless stopped.
  
  I saw an abandoned car behind a low rise to the north of the bunker. Guessing this was George's transportation, I stopped and spent a few minutes under the hood pulling out the rotor under the distributor cap. Without it, he was stranded. I similarly disabled my jeep and put both rotors in my pocket. Unlimbering Wilhelmina, I grabbed the toggles and pulled back the slide. A 9 mm Parabellum round snicked into the firing chamber. I set off to find George and stop him.
  
  When Sutter had said he ordered the bunker sealed, I hadn't understood how thoroughly he'd meant that. The thick steel door proved impervious. Even with a cutting torch used against the hinges, I discounted the chances of gaining entry before the laser fired at the space station and cremated all the orbiting Russian cosmonauts. There were no windows in the solid concrete walls for me to break through. The roof proved as invulnerable. The laser tube thrust up through the roof, but the arrangement proved similar to that used for large observatory telescopes. The laser stuck out a slit, heavy steel plates stationed on either side to prevent my entry.
  
  "Carter?" boomed the loudspeaker on the roof. "Why don't you give it up? You can't stop me now. The test will be over before you can force your way in."
  
  "I'll stop you, George. I have to. You've been clever up till now, but you haven't thought about the consequences of knocking down the Salyut."
  
  "So you figured it out. Bully for you."
  
  "It means another war, a big one with the U.S. and Russia tossing H-bombs at each other indiscriminately. You don't want to be caught in the middle of that, do you?"
  
  "While living in the fallout isn't my idea of paradise, I won't be around to be part of the fallout."
  
  "What did Madame Lin offer you? Sanctuary in China? Don't be a fool. She'll kill you the instant you deliver what she wants. She's ruthless. And you're a rank amateur at this game."
  
  "As long as I have the laser switching device, she needs me. I have that worked out, Carter. I have everything carefully planned. I'm sick of busting a gut and getting nothing in return. The others are all so selfless it makes me sick to my stomach. The government has them snowed. All of them. But not me! I'll get what I deserve and to hell with all of them!"
  
  I searched the perimeter of the building, hunting for one small weakness. Sutter had designed the bunker too well. Even ramming my jeep into one of those foot-thick concrete walls would have been futile. I remembered the tons of steel reinforcing used on the other bunker. This was even more heavily constructed.
  
  "Carter? It's only five minutes before the laser fires on the space station. Can you see the Salyut? It should be nearing the evening star anytime now."
  
  I squinted into the setting sun. About ten degrees above the horizon I found Venus. To the left of it was a dimmer spot of light, constantly changing intensity as the space station rotated and reflected light off different portions of its exterior. I have no love of the Russians, not after years of matching wits — and bullets — with their agents, but circumstances change constantly in the world of espionage. It now proved vital to U.S. security for me to protect the space station, even with my life, if necessary.
  
  I doubted flinging myself in front of the bore of the laser cannon would matter. The potent beam of coherent lightning would lash through my puny body virtually undiminished. If a hundred miles of atmosphere barely dispersed the beam, nothing I could put in front of the muzzle would slow it down.
  
  Still, that tube provided the only weakness in the concrete fortress. I desperately wanted to see the laser tube slowly lower and retract into the confines of the bunker, a signal that Sutter had successfully overriden the program George had stuffed into the computer's uncaring maw. Nothing of the sort happened.
  
  "Ready to see the sight of your life, Carter? Three minutes to firing."
  
  The laser tracked slightly, correcting for atmospheric distortion. Directly overhead, a sudden flare and a long flaming tail scarred the twilight. The missile from Green River had been launched on schedule. It hadn't occurred to me to order cancellation of the launch. Sutter hadn't thought of it, either.
  
  "The laser didn't even try to track the rocket, Carter," gloated George, safe inside his fortress. "All it thinks about now is matching orbital parameters with the space station. And when they match, the laser cannon fires. Less than a minute to go. Carter. This is military history being made!"
  
  I jumped, pulling myself onto the roof of the bunker. The laser barrel moved infinitesimally, homing in on the Salyut. Wilhelmina in hand, I aimed, firing slowly, deliberately, each bullet penetrating the multimillion-dollar laser tube. I didn't know if this seriously affected it or not. All I could do was try.
  
  "Damn you, Carter, what are you doing? There're only fifteen seconds until firing. Just watch, dammit, just watch!"
  
  I emptied the clip, the slide locking in the open position. I ejected the clip and stuffed in a new one, cycling in a fresh round. Continuing to fire, I made Swiss cheese of the laser. Tiny plumes of carbon dioxide whitely jetted from the holes I'd shot into the sides. By the time my Luger had emptied again, the laser had vanished in a cold silver cloud of shimmering coolant gas.
  
  "Fire!" screamed George, over the PA system.
  
  I threw up my arm to protect my eyes. The crackle of the capacitors inside as they shoved megawatt after megawatt into the lasing chamber reached my ears. But the intense lightning bolt of death never launched into the heavens. I edged closer to the tube and peered down it. Huge sparks limned the interior with blue discharges.
  
  The Eighth Card laser had been played — and trumped.
  
  All that remained was tying up the loose ends. I kicked at the ruined laser tube until it collapsed and crashed down into the bunker. The hole didn't appear large enough for me to squeeze throughout I managed. I wasn't about to let George stay inside much longer.
  
  "You stupid meddling bastard!" George screamed. "You've ruined everything!"
  
  While he wasted breath screaming curses and threats, I acted. Diving low, I tackled him just above the knees. We tumbled into a pile of thrashing arms and legs. He flailed wildly while I kept my punches short, hard, and probing for vital spots. Only the cramped position prevented me from knocking him out. Edward George succeeded in getting away by pulling a heavy book off a nearby table and smashing it hard into the back of my neck.
  
  Stars spun in crazy orbits, but I struggled to follow him. I'd kept George's scheme to destroy the Salyut from succeeding. I had to put him away and go after Madame Lin, the real mastermind behind this plot, but it only sounded easy. Edward George had recovered from my initial attack and fought fiercely.
  
  Unlike Sutter, George kept himself in prime physical condition. A bony fist snaked out and slammed hard against my cheek, sending me sprawling, my arms pinwheeling wildly. Wilhelmina was empty; Hugo slid easily into my hand. Fairness is a concept with no meaning when your life is on the line.
  
  "Don't kill me, Carter," the scientist whined. "I'll give up. Honest, I will!"
  
  His hands went above his head. I should have known that he wouldn't surrender this easily. His hands closed over a pipe wrench left on a high shelf. The heavy metal tool tumbled toward me. I avoided it — barely. Instead of smashing my skull to a bloody pulp it only deadened my right arm. Hugo dropped to the concrete floor.
  
  George gave me no time to pick up the stiletto with my left hand. He kicked out, his foot landing squarely in the middle of my chest. I took the blow, rolled away, and robbed it of some of its power. Even though I remained virtually undamaged, George now had the edge. Hugo gleamed wickedly in his hand.
  
  "Come, come. Carter. Don't be afraid of your little friend. It only wants to drink deeply of its master's blood." His stance and movement told me he wasn't the most skillful knife fighter in the world, but he was also far from the clumsiest.
  
  He made short slashing motions, to and fro, driving me backward. He quickly had me in a corner, the point of the blade steadied and aimed up between my eyes. He knew most of the tricks. But so did I. He was good; I'm better.
  
  A two-foot length of chain I picked up off the floor gave me the defense I needed. Swinging it in a short arc, tracing out a figure eight in front of me, I wove a curtain of steel between me and the knife blade. As George struck, the chain wound around his wrist, and I jerked as hard as I could. I lost my balance, but he lost the knife.
  
  "You'll die, Carter… I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do!"
  
  "It just might be the last thing you try," I said. George kicked a chair into my path and bolted, running for the forest of huge capacitors. I vaulted the chair and went after him, then hesitated. The thick rods atop each of the capacitors discharged fat blue sparks, any one of which would weld the fillings in my teeth if I got hit. George had no fear of those barely tamed lightning bolts. Not knowing how to proceed might kill me.
  
  I stalked around the edges of the oil-bath capacitors, wary of a trap. I heard only the snapping and crackling of the electrical arcing. The garlic odor of ozone assaulted my nostrils, and thick oil leaking from the capacitors made the concrete under my soles treacherously slippery. I circled until I came to the door leading from the bunker. I checked it. The thrown deadbolts held it securely. I moved on, still cautious and suspecting an attack at any instant.
  
  Edward George might as well have vanished from the face of the earth. I walked slowly between the capacitors, studying the oil on the floor, hoping to catch sight of a footprint before the viscous fluid moved to erase it.
  
  "Come off it, George," I called out. "Surrender. Make it easy on yourself. Tell me everything you know about Madame Lin. I'll see that they don't go too heavy on you." Whether or not he knew I couldn't make such promises — and wouldn't, even if possible — I don't know. He didn't rise to the bait.
  
  The clink of metal against metal warned me that he had returned to the laser carriage. I remember Hawk telling me that the Burlison switching device rested in the base of the laser. George was removing the bolts to get at the vital solid state switch, the heart of the laser's success.
  
  I left the oily forest of the capacitors and went around to catch the man by surprise. A dark form hunched over the bolts, one of which had already been pulled free. As a myriad details registered on my mind and I realized this wasn't George but only a dummy he had hastily propped up, I felt the shock wave of a descending pipe wrench. The solid impact on the top of my head caused fireworks to explode. The red veil of pain mercifully faded away as I lost consciousness.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Nine
  
  
  
  
  I struggled back to consciousness. The throbbing pain in my head made me think some demented dwarf hid inside my skull and kicked the backs of my eyeballs with spiked track shoes. I slumped to the floor, refusing to hurry my return to reality. The pain died down a little, and I fought my eyelids over whether or not to open.
  
  They opened.
  
  I thought I would go immediately blind from the brilliant blue sparks leaping through the bunker to touch everything metallic. Not understanding what had happened, I kicked out, discovered both ankles were firmly secured to a metal stanchion and gave up for a second. When my strength permitted, I heaved and rolled over onto my back.
  
  Itemizing didn't give me a pretty picture. My hands were bound behind my back with a short length of rope. My feet were fastened to a steel beam so thick I couldn't hope to bend it in a million years. The heaviness of the air, such as that which precedes a spring shower, made my nose wrinkle. I sneezed. The ozone in the air made my eyes water and tickled at the back of my throat. I sneezed again.
  
  Tensing my stomach muscles pulled me to a sitting position. I surveyed the bunker. The first item I noticed gave me a cold, sinking feeling. The carriage bolts on the laser cannon had been removed. Loose wires, ripped out in haste, testified that Edward George's mission had succeeded and mine had failed. The vital portion of the laser weapon, the switching device that made the difference between a toy and a deadly weapon of war, was stolen.
  
  I tried rubbing my feet up and down against the steel beam hoping to abrade the ropes. It didn't work. I twisted double and almost succeeded in getting my fingers onto the knots securing my feet. Almost. The old saying, "An inch is as good as a mile," proved all too true in this case.
  
  The crackling of high voltage electricity became deafening. I noticed that most of the meters on the control panel pegged out on the high end of the scales. Several of the slender needles had actually bent around the pegs, indicating a sudden and catastrophic overload. Something deadly was occurring in the bunker, and I was caught right in die middle of it, bound and helpless.
  
  My fears were fed when the radio snarled, amid a flurry of static, " readings show dangerous overload levels. Danger, danger! All personnel evacuate Project Eighth Card bunker. Repeat, extreme danger. Emergency overrides nonoperational. Call base security and a fire control team to…"
  
  The static gave testimony to the intense electric field mounting inside the concrete bunker. I felt the hairs rising on the back of my neck. And they sell negative ion generators because the cations are supposed to revitalize you. I shuddered as the cold fingers of fear clutched at my heart.
  
  I didn't know the real dangers but made an educated guess. The titanic discharges within the building represented only a small amount of the total energy stored in those oil-bath capacitors. When they no longer maintained their charge — and the discharge rods on top of the capacitors no longer carried away enough energy — the baths themselves would explode. Boiling hot oil would fill the bunker.
  
  Boiled in oil. An ancient way of dying, painful and slow, but it'd be mine thanks to modern-day high technology. I cursed Edward George, then stopped. Wasting time thinking about how I should have avoided this fix did nothing to get me out of it. I calmed down and looked around, really looking this time.
  
  The hilt of my knife stuck out from under the desk. I launched myself up into the air, felt my progress checked by the ropes around my ankles, and then I plummeted to the hard concrete floor. The fall knocked the wind out of me, but I recovered fast. Straining. every muscle in my body screaming for mercy, I arched my back and almost touched the hilt of Hugo with my lips.
  
  Defeated by an inch again. Life often depends on distances as small as this. I refused to give up. Thrusting out my tongue, dragging it along the oil concrete floor and almost retching, I succeeded in touching Hugo. Using a flicking motion, I got the knife to spin. The sharp tip spun around and poked into my check, drawing a tiny drop of blood. This was the sweetest blood I'd ever shed.
  
  The side of my head pressed down into the knife, and I managed to slide Hugo along the floor until my fingers wrapped thankfully around the handle. I pushed the knife into the floor, bracing it for the arduous task of cutting my bonds.
  
  As each strand parted, I cringed a little more. The lightning blasts from capacitor to capacitor deafened me. Finally, after what seemed an eternity of effort, my hands came free. I wasted no time getting my ankles out of the ropes binding them. I massaged wrists and feet for a few seconds, getting the circulation back. It wouldn't serve me to start out and then fall due to numbness.
  
  Hugo went back into his sheath, and I recovered Wilhelmina, shoving the empty Luger into my shoulder holster. I checked and found the two distributor rotors from the jeep and George's car still securely in my pocket. He hadn't bothered to search me. That put him afoot in the desert.
  
  I went to check out the escape routes open to me. The tiny aperture through which I'd arrived had a metal collar circling it. When I had smashed the laser tube, the supports remained fastened to the ceiling. With the lightning storm raging around me, it would be sheer suicide trying to get through that hole. I'd be fried by any of half a hundred searing flashes arcing over and touching it.
  
  Throwing up my arm to protect my face, I skirted the capacitors and made my way to the only door out of the bunker. It didn't come as a surprise when I found it securely fastened from the outside. A dizzy instant of deja vu passed. I had been in a jam just as bad the first day I had come onto the base.
  
  This was getting to be a habit — a deadly habit.
  
  Shouldering the door a few times to check its solidity, I quickly gave up and decided brains would have to work instead of brawn. I patted myself down in a quick search, trying to remember if I had any of the gadgets the Special Effects Department foists off on us field agents.
  
  I had nothing.
  
  I'd been on vacation in Las Vegas, and Hawk had sent me down here to Albuquerque without more than a short briefing. No gas bombs, no high explosives, nothing. I took a quick inventory of the items I did have. Wilhelmina: empty. Hugo: useless against a steel door. A few coins: not even silver. A few scrapes of paper, a bent piece of wire, and the two car rotors finished the appallingly short list.
  
  The heat from the overcharging capacitors boiled forth, threatening to set me on fire. I turned my back to it and bent over to present as little a surface area as I could. I knew it wouldn't matter in the long run. If those capacitors exploded, burning hot oil would spatter all over the inside of the bunker.
  
  I'd be a deep fat fried secret agent.
  
  My mind kept coming back to the pathetic inventory from my pocket. I had missed a vital fact in the paltry collection. Paper? Could I slip it between the frame and the door lock? That worked best using a credit card against a cheap snap lock. I had left home without my American Express credit card and didn't know if this lock would yield to such a simple attack. But I tried it with the paper. I had nothing to lose but a little time.
  
  The paper wadded up and slipped between the door and the frame easily enough. A quick up and down searching pattern located the bolt. Try as I might, the paper wouldn't slip the lock open. I chewed through the bottom of the paper and soon had only confetti in my hand.
  
  The nagging thought that I had missed something prompted me to reexamine my pockets. The coin? No. The tiny length of wire? No.
  
  No. But a longer length of wire might turn the trick for me. The door presented a solid steel barrier. I'd seen welding torches cut through steel without much effort. While I didn't have an oxyacetylene torch, I did have an electric arc torch. The biggest I'd ever seen crackled and hissed just a few feet behind me.
  
  I dashed through the puddles of hot oil on the floor and found a supply cabinet. Inside lay the answer to my prayers. A heavy roll of electrical cable, at least 00 gauge, made alarm bells ring in my head. I lugged the heavy cable to the steel door.
  
  I used Hugo to strip off the neoprene insulation on long pieces of the wire. I turned the bare wire around both hinges, then strung the naked wire across the door and looped it several times around the door handle. I snaked out the wire with the insulation still on it and looked appraisingly up at one of the thick discharge rods on the nearest capacitor.
  
  I couldn't simply go over and stick this end against a rod. I'd be cremated as soon as I got close enough for the electricity to arc over. Another approach would have to be used — and quick. I felt the electrical tension in the air mounting more and more rapidly. The metal canisters holding in the oil around the capacitors made noises like a cooling kitchen stove, signalling a catastrophic end.
  
  Frantically. I scraped the insulation off the last four feet of the heavy cable. I formed it into a loop and made a crude splice. I resheathed Hugo, stood back and then, like a cowboy roping a runaway steer, tossed the wire up and over one of the capacitor discharge rods.
  
  I didn't have a chance to fling up my arm to cover my face. Even before the wire lariat lassoed the rod, high voltage electricity reached out and flowed along the cable. The wire blasted apart as if it had been made from high explosive. Vaporized droplets of molten copper splattered into my face and body, but the action of the electricity against the door was everything I had hoped for.
  
  The handle of the steer door simply vanished in the searing onslaught of electricity. The speed of light hardly seemed fast enough as the electricity looped around both hinges and melted the tenacious metal to puddled remains.
  
  I shouldered though the superheated corpse of the door just as I heard an ominous crackling behind me. Never slowing for an instant, I ran like hell for the low rise fifty yards distant. A thunderclap so loud it deafened me erupted from the bunker. I slammed hard against the side of the rise, dazed, lying in the sand with a burning rain of concrete and steel and boiling oil pelting me.
  
  When I managed to focus my eyes on the bunker, I hardly believed the carnage wrought in such a short time. The oil from the capacitors had caught fire in the intense heat of the electrical discharge. An inferno blazed unchecked, huge gouts of flame leaping from the door and the single opening in the top of the bunker. The roof collapsed noisily, destroying everything within the structure.
  
  I swatted out the burning spots of debris on my arms and back, winced as a blistered spot on my face picked up an unwanted bit of dirt, then heaved myself to hands and knees. I panted harshly, trying to clear the acrid smell of oil and charred wiring from my nostrils. I was still alive, but it had been a close call, too close for comfort.
  
  "I don't give a damn if you're alive, N3," Hawk raged. "You were supposed to uncover the spy working against Eighth Card and stop him. Not only didn't you uncover the saboteur until he virtually revealed himself to you, he got clean away in that damned helicopter with the high-voltage laser switching device. You have botched this from beginning to end, N3."
  
  I was in no mood to argue with David Hawk. I glared back at his scowling image on the television screen, trying to control my own anger. I failed.
  
  "Goddammit," I shouted, "you pull me off a well-deserved vacation to try and pass myself off as a dead scientist. If there's a stupider scheme in the world, I can't imagine what it is. I had nothing going for me. The scientist's wife hated me from the first because of the impersonation. By the time I'd won her over to my side, the opposition had the chance it needed." I took a deep drink from the bourbon on the rocks in my hand. The searing liquor fed my anger. "I didn't know I was up against Madame Lin. I didn't know the first thing about this assignment. But I took it. If anyone's to blame, Hawk, I think you know who it is."
  
  "The job required immediate attention," he said sullenly.
  
  I heaved a deep sigh and apologized. "Look, I've nearly got myself killed a half dozen times since I showed up here. The only positive thing accomplished is flushing out Madame Lin. And that's not very much."
  
  "No, N3, it isn't."
  
  "Dammit, don't agree!" I exclaimed. "You're supposed to come up with the brilliant insight and tell me what I missed."
  
  "Go over it from the beginning. Perhaps it'll fall out while you're talking."
  
  I grumbled, "The only thing likely to fall out is my battered brain." Louder, I said, "Sutter is in the clear. The NSA agents checking him out have given him a clean bill of health as far as espionage is concerned. He's an alcoholic who needs drying out and he gambles to excess and poorly. His brother-in-law has begun bailing him out because the banks are starting to turn him down for loans."
  
  "No espionage connection found," concurred Hawk.
  
  "Anne Roxbury's indiscretions with George amounted to little. She also checks out as an uncompromised security risk, even if other aspects of her behavior have compromised her sexually. George appeared to be priming her for future use in some other scheme, as yet unknown."
  
  "Anne Roxbury, clear," said Hawk in his irritatingly authoritative voice.
  
  "Marta Burlison has been checked out stem to stern," I said.
  
  "Personally, by AXE's very own Killmaster."
  
  Ignoring the jibe, I continued. "Others with access to the classified material on the project are in the clear, also. Edward George worked alone inside Project Eighth Card."
  
  "It appears he free-lanced all this," interrupted Hawk. "We have no contact with Madame Lin recorded — prior to Richard Burlison's invention of the laser cannon switching device. It comes down like George saw the chance to make a lot of money fast by selling his information to the highest bidder. He didn't know how to contact the proper people, being an amateur in a highly complex international game. Only Madame Lin responded. Possessing the vital switching device would give her a variety of options. She manipulated George into knocking out the spy satellite looking down on China, then tried to use the laser to shoot down the Russian Salyut."
  
  "Is there any indication that this might have been a brainchild of George's?"
  
  "None. It doesn't fit into the psychological profile we've prepared on the man. He's vain, macho, brilliant, lazy, and not the type with an ounce of subtlety in him. Both the destruction of the spy satellite and the attempt on the Salyut are exactly what we'd expect from Madame Lin."
  
  I considered this from every possible angle. Hawk had to be right. The few times I'd met Edward George, he hadn't seemed the least bit subtle. Every move was up-front, pushing, aggressive. I had just been too busy trying to pin it all on Sutter to see it.
  
  "Furthermore," continued Hawk, "the Chinese network of agents in the New Mexico area have no contact with George. Madame Lin is operating independently of them. She is the man's sole contact. This appears to have been a chance meeting, and she didn't want to share any of the glory with the locals. Their record, by the way, is less than adequate because all have compromised their covers some time ago."
  
  "So Madame Lin's presence actually did take you by surprise? She dropped in, the locals didn't know about it, and now she and George have taken off in that helicopter for parts unknown. Any luck in tracing them?" I still chafed at George's easy escape. The helicopter had landed, picked him up at the bunker, and flown off under the radar coverage. The rotor from his car's distributor still rested in my pocket as a reminder of being so clever.
  
  "None," Hawk said. "The airport had not been alerted to stop them. There are quite a few Vietnamese in the area, and the airline clerks wouldn't remember a female Oriental unless she did something to bring herself to their attention."
  
  "Madame Lin wouldn't arouse any suspicions," I said. "No one remembers having seen her at the airport, then?"
  
  "No one. Edward George has performed an equally adept disappearing act. We're tracking down several possibilities. One to Dallas, one to Seattle, and three to Los Angeles. Nothing says any of these are the man we want."
  
  "Dr. Sutter said the switching device weighed about three pounds, including the case. Did airport security notice anything that they might have mistaken for a bomb?"
  
  I clutched at straws, and we both knew it. The simple fact was that both Madame Lin and Edward George had gotten away from me. I might have stopped the man from taking the switching device if I'd had ray wits about me. I had slipped up and now the country's security — its very survival — was imperiled.
  
  The world stood at the brink of World War III and didn't even know it. That's one of the penalties of being privy to secret information. I knew. It rested heavily on my shoulders.
  
  I stared at Hawk's now impassive face. He had conquered his earlier anger and seemed calm now. I wished he had raged some more at me. It was easier to take than this professional, implacable composure.
  
  "What about his friends? Did he let anything slip to one of them?"
  
  "Not that we can find out. He told six different girlfriends six different stories."
  
  "Six? He got around."
  
  "Quite. You need not interview any of these young ladies. The NSA people have already done so." The slight sneer on his lips told of his dislike for the National Security Agency. He considered them clowns, bumbling and bungling their way through intelligence work. At times, I shared Hawk's opinion. At the moment, though, I was happy to have them do any of the routine footwork.
  
  The fancy stuff was being left up to me.
  
  "The President is very displeased, N3," said Hawk.
  
  "I'll try to do better."
  
  "No, Nick, you won't try to do better. You will do better. That is a direct order. It seems that the laser switching device in George's possession is the only one in existence. We require it back safely."
  
  "But the schematics for it are at Wright-Patterson. You said so."
  
  "True, but this is a hand-built device requiring some hundreds of hours of skilled and demanding work to assemble properly. Fabrication of new units has begun — but we need this switching device back intact as soon as possible."
  
  "And if I can't?"
  
  "Destroy it, of course. But if the Russians know this switch is destroyed, they might decide to risk a preemptive strike immediately."
  
  "One laser cannon can't make that much difference," I protested.
  
  "Our Soviet analysts feel that it might, N3, given the ineffectual state of our recent diplomatic endeavors when dealing with Russian incursions. You have your orders. Carry them out."
  
  The television screen fuzzed up with the white dancing spots of a TV without a signal to pick up. I leaned back in the chair and stared at the swirling motes, trying to get some idea of how to obey that direct order.
  
  "Do you three have any idea where George might have gone?" I asked.
  
  Harold Sutter, Anne Roxbury, and Marta Burlison sat around the dining room table, looks of intense concentration on their faces. This was a last-ditch effort on my part. Routine investigation hadn't turned up a clue to George's whereabouts, and Madame Lin had been in the spy business long enough to learn to vanish like mist in the morning sun. Finding her would be accidental. My best bet lay in Edward George's colleagues coming up with a long shot.
  
  "I'm sorry," said Anne Roxbury, staring at my unbandaged face for the first time. "He never mentioned anything of this to me. I would have turned him in if he had."
  
  "That's not what I'm asking, Anne. I want to know about the man's personal tastes. Where would he feel safe? Did he mention any city more than once favorably?"
  
  "I can't say he did. We, well, we went to Vegas a couple times," Anne admitted. "But he didn't like to gamble. We just hung around our room and…"
  
  "I can guess," I said, disgusted. Remembering my own short sojourn in Las Vegas made this task even more distasteful. "Dr. Sutter? You've worked longest with him. Any ideas where he might have gone?"
  
  "We went to Vegas a few times, on our way through to the Nevada Test Site. We worked on a project a few years ago that required testing in an intense radiation environment. The underground atomic tests at NTS were just what we needed. But, as Anne said, he didn't like to gamble. He struck me as the type who always played it safe — except with women." Realizing that what he'd said applied to Anne, Sutter hastily added, "Not you, of course, but in general."
  
  I turned to Marta and saw the peculiar expression on her face. Deciding both Sutter and Anne Roxbury had been milked of all useful information, I told them, "Why don't the two of you go home? If you think of anything that might help, call me here."
  
  As soon as they had left, Marta spoke up. "Nick, I've been trying to put my finger on it. Ed mentioned something once — but I can't remember what it was."
  
  "About a city?"
  
  "Yes, a city. One that we were all talking about once. But I'm so confused. Nothing works right in my head anymore. You… you don't have to pose as Richard anymore and the others know he's dead and… and I should be able to get over his death, but I can't." She broke down and cried, her face cupped in her hands.
  
  "Take it easy," I said, my arm reaching around her quaking shoulders and pulling her closer. "Don't worry about this. It probably wasn't anything. Edward George is too smooth an operator to reveal where he's likely to go for the sale of the laser switching device to Madame Lin. But a man as security-conscious as George would pick only a place where he felt safe. Where?"
  
  "I don't know, I just don't know!"
  
  I rocked her back and forth for a while, then put my finger under her shaking chin and raised her face to mine. Our eyes met and a silent communication flowed. I gently kissed her lips. The kiss became more and more passionate. Soon, we were hungrily kissing, as if discovering this wondrous act for the first time.
  
  Her fingers began working at the buttons of my shirt, fumbling at first, then moving with greater dexterity. I let her strip off my shirt. She ran the tips of her fingers over the many scare crisscrossing my bare chest.
  
  "You've been in so many fights, Nick," she said softly. "You must be very good at what you do to still be alive."
  
  "The other side of that is that I'm not so good, otherwise I wouldn't have any scars at all."
  
  "Are there any spies who don't have scars?"
  
  "I don't know. I've never checked out the others."
  
  I silenced further debate on the subject by kissing her ruby lips again. They tasted like wine. At any rate, I felt myself becoming more and more intoxicated. I couldn't get enough of her. I kissed her lips, her cheeks, her closed eyes. My lips brushed gently over her face until I came to her jawbone. I traced backward along it until I came to the perfection of her shell-like ear. My tongue slowly circled the rim before diving into the tight little channel. She strained against my body, her fingers insistent and clawing.
  
  While I toyed with her ear, gently nibbling at the lobe, blowing hotly to further sensitize the flesh, my hands stroked over her lush, trim, quivering body. Her blouse vanished as if by magic. She wasn't wearing a bra.
  
  My hands cupped her large breasts, as if weighing them. The nipples throbbed with life, growing larger every time I stroked over them. When I took both rock-hard nipples between thumb and forefinger and began rolling them around in tiny circles, she squealed with joy, caught her breath and tensed all over. She shuddered, shoving her chest forward so even more of the firm, resilient flesh pressed into my palms.
  
  "Yes, Nick darling, yes!" she hissed. "It's so good being with you. You know just the right things to do."
  
  
  
  
  
  My hands shoved her melon-sized breasts upward as my mouth worked down along the hollow under her ear to the point directly under her chin. My tongue dragged a wet, rough path down between her breasts. She shivered again as passion seized control of her body.
  
  I felt myself growing harder. My pants were a nuisance. Marta's swiftly flying fingers took care of that. Soon enough, my hot, hard manhood throbbed in the circle of her fingers. She stroked up to the very tip, squeezed lovingly, then stroked back to tap her fingertips against my scrotum. I felt a surge of desire for her unlike anything I have ever felt for another woman.
  
  She was special. She was the epitome of womanhood. I needed to possess her more than I had ever needed any other woman in my life. My weight carried her backward to the floor. She sobbed and kissed and moaned as we passionately clung to one another.
  
  In my haste to get her totally naked, I tore her skirt. She cried out, "Rip it off me, Nick! Do it! I want you! I need you now!"
  
  My fingers slipped under the waistband of her skirt. Tendons stood out on my forearm as I jerked. A ripping noise, her sharp intake of breath as the fabric cut into her flesh, then the skirt came free. She kicked savagely to get clear of the tattered garment. Lifting her behind so that I could slide off her panties, I felt the dampness seeping out from between her trim legs.
  
  Her thighs opened wantonly for me. We needed one another desperately. I didn't understand it and I didn't take the time to analyze my feelings. The desire boiling in my loins drove me on. I slid forward, my tumescence sliding along her vulva. I felt the thick lubricating oils seething from her interior. My erection savored the slippery cradle of her labia as I moved back and forth.
  
  "All the way in, Nick. I need you in me!"
  
  She lifted herself off the floor and jammed her hips downward. For a second, I thought she was trying to get away. Then I sank all the way into her steamy, humid interior. We both froze, savoring the most intimate feelings possible.
  
  Then I began to pump in and out of her softly yielding body. Her hot tunnel of female flesh surrounded me, sucked me in deeper with each stroke, clutched fiercely at my hard length as I retreated. I began a corkscrewing action that ground our crotches together and stirred our passions to the breaking point.
  
  I pistoned savagely into her, barely hearing her shrieks of pleasure. All too soon, it was over and we lay on the floor in each other's arms, panting, sweaty, contented.
  
  She trailed her fingers through the hairy mat on my chest. She said, "I don't know what to say, Nick."
  
  "Don't say anything. Just lie back and enjoy the glow. You do feel that, don't you?"
  
  "Yeah, I do. It… it seldom was like this with Rich. He wasn't the best lover in the world, but I loved him."
  
  I didn't have anything to say to this. I kept my silence, being happy enough to feel the warm pressure of her body against mine.
  
  "It was as good as this once with us," she said, lost in the fairy land of memories. "That conference in San Francisco we'd gone to. Richard gave a paper on something or other — I never understood a fraction of what he talked about — and he'd received such compliments he almost popped. The feeling carried over that evening. We made love all night long." She sighed again, snuggling closer. "Even Ed claimed he'd gotten enough that night. Maybe it was the air coming in off the ocean."
  
  "Ed? Edward George?"
  
  "Yes. He said there was always something magical about San Francisco. The city for lovers or the city of lovers or something. He went there for every scientific conference he could. I thought San Francisco was nothing but a windup toy of a city at first, but Rich changed my mind." She spoke quietly now, without much emotion. I felt a tear against my bare chest, but she quickly wiped it away. There wasn't a second one.
  
  "Did George ever mention visiting San Francisco other than for business?"
  
  "No, why? Do you think that's where he might have gone?"
  
  "I don't know." I thought hard about this. The pleasurable postcoital glow vanished from my mind as the more analytical portion of my brain took over. Things began to click into place. Edward George needed to make the exchange of the laser switching device for his money in a place where he felt safe. He was no fool; he knew Madame Lin would try to double-cross him.
  
  Would he feel safe enough in San Francisco to attempt to make the trade there?
  
  "How many times did he go there?"
  
  "Every time he could," Marta said. "That'd be about four times, I think. And he went a couple more times, to Berkeley, really. He visited the Lawrence Berkeley Lab but stayed in San Francisco."
  
  "Any particular hotel?"
  
  "I can't remember," she said, beginning to sob silently. I cursed myself for ruining the otherwise lovely moment between us, but it had been necessary. Only when she'd gotten totally relaxed did the proper memories come rushing to the surface for me to pluck from her brain.
  
  Sometimes, being an agent for AXE is the hardest thing in the entire world.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Ten
  
  
  
  
  "Do I have to go along, Nick?" Marta Burlison asked. "Don't get me wrong. I like being with you, but this isn't the sort of thing I relish getting involved in. I quit the DIA because of all the cloak and dagger nonsense."
  
  "This nonsense, as you put it, might cause another world war. I'd call it mighty important."
  
  "I didn't mean it that way, Nick. Really, I didn't. I just can't get my head straight. Everything is moving too fast for me. Now that I can come out and admit that Richard is dead, I find that there's nothing inside me. I've become a hollow shell. I should mourn, but somehow I just can't."
  
  I sympathized with her. She had held her grief inside so long it gnawed away at her guts. Now that she could let it go, it stayed firmly entrenched and refused to leave. She was emotionally stunted right now. One day — who knew when? — it would all come pouring out in huge emotional torrents.
  
  That wasn't my concern. I had to find George. More important, I had to recover the high-voltage laser cannon switching device he had stolen. Even though Harold Sutter solemnly assured me that it would be difficult to reverse engineer the switching device, taking the physical model and figuring out what all the integrated circuits did, Hawk had ordered me to recover it.
  
  One thing was in my favor. Burlison had etched the circuitry onto a piece of frangible glass. The slightest scratch across its surface caused the entire switching device to turn to powder, ruining it forever. I'd heard that many of the trigger circuits for the atomic bombs were similarly constructed to prevent terrorists from tinkering with them and getting workable schematics for more.
  
  I wanted to personally recover that piece of circuitry, however. My reputation was on the line — and my pride had been cut to ribbons. Madame Lin had made a fool of me over and over and Edward George, amateur that he was, had stolen the switching device from under my nose.
  
  That switch had to be recovered intact, both for national security reasons and personal ones.
  
  "I need your firsthand impression of San Francisco. You know the places where you and your husband went. George went along with you to some of them."
  
  "That's true, but I can't remember the names."
  
  "Exactly, but your memory'll be tickled by the sight of those places, and you'll remember then."
  
  "I hope so," she said dubiously. "It never seemed important at the time. We'd just walk around in Chinatown until we saw a likely looking place, then we'd eat. Or shop and just sightsee. There wasn't any pressure on me to remember the places."
  
  "I know, I know," I said soothingly. "Don't worry about it. Just relax and try to wipe it all from your mind for the moment. The plane will be in the air soon, and in no time we'll be in San Francisco."
  
  The seat belt sign lighted and the stewardess went through her robotic "in case of cabin depressurization" speech. The 727's nose tipped into the sky, and the rush of the takeoff pressed us back into our seats. I waited until the "no smoking" sign winked off, then lit a cigarette, puffed on it twice, and passed it to Marta. She gratefully took it while I lit another one for myself.
  
  "Just relax," I repeated. "Imagine yourself in San Francisco. What hotel did you stay at?"
  
  "We took the bus from the airport and walked a few blocks to one of the streets with the cable car running on it. We jumped onto the cable car and went past a big square with lots of grass. Union Square, I think. Yes, definitely, it as Union Square."
  
  "Good," I encouraged. I formed a mental picture of all that went on as she spoke.
  
  "We got off. I thought it was funny we didn't pay. Rich just laughed at me, saying we hadn't been on long enough. We got off just beyond Union Square. The doormen wore funny English uniforms. The St. Francis!" she exclaimed. "Yes, that's where we stayed." She puffed furiously at her cigarette, her face vanishing behind a cloud of smoke. I puffed more sedately on mine, feeling we made progress.
  
  "The cable car didn't run where we wanted to go. We walked up Grant Avenue and went into Chinatown. But it wasn't far. Only two or three blocks. I… I don't remember much after that."
  
  "You've done as well as can be expected," I told her. "Chinatown's not only a tourist spot, it also fronts for a variety of less legal organizations, like the various tongs."
  
  "The Chinese Mafia?"
  
  "Something like that," I said. "Really, there are six different tongs. They're something like social clubs with lots of muscle. They rule Chinatown with an iron grip. But insinuated between the fingers of the tongs is a branch of the Social Affairs Department."
  
  "What's that? It sounds like a singles bar."
  
  I smiled. "The Chinese have a wry sense of humor. The headquarters for the SAD is a block off Tien-A-Min Square in Peking. Some of the shrewdest minds ever turned to spy work reside there."
  
  "I never heard of them while I was with the DIA."
  
  "You probably wouldn't. It hasn't been until the past few years that they've reached out from mainland China and penetrated significantly into the U.S. They've made up for lost time. At a guess, there are no fewer than twenty cities where they have contact stations established. Madame Lin prefers San Francisco for a variety of reasons. It's a seaport, it has heavy international travel, the city is large enough to get lost in if necessary, and Orientals are commonplace."
  
  "I know what she tried to do to us at the power tower, but that…" Marta shook her head. "Is she as evil as you make her out to be? Really?"
  
  I nodded. I felt my fists clenching as I thought of Madame Lin. "That little trick she pulled on us at the solar power tower was mild. She enjoys torture." Marta shivered and pulled her arms around herself. "As a spy, she's world class. I believe Edward George will find that he is playing out of his league."
  
  "You think she'll kill him and take the laser switching device?"
  
  "She'll certainly try. I'd like to get it away from him before he has a chance to meet with her." Plans and counterplans raced through my head. Madame Lin didn't have a corner on cold-bloodedness.
  
  "I still don't know why you're so positive that Ed has gone to San Francisco. Why not Denver or Kansas City or who knows?"
  
  I didn't have a good answer for her. I had no firm information about the man's destination. Hawk had informed me that all the possible leads uncovered at the airport had failed to pan out. He had ordered a person-by-person check of all departing passengers on the afternoon George had stolen the switching device. That amounted to checking out over five hundred people, men and women. The report would take a week, perhaps longer, to file. By then, George could be out of the country, with Madame Lin in possession of the laser component.
  
  No, I didn't know if Edward George had gone to San Francisco to make the trade. I only hoped he had. Otherwise, the future of the world appeared filled with mushroom clouds of megaton death.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The bustle of the city surrounded us, swallowing people in the crowd and immediately replacing them with other faceless strangers. We stood on a corner in Chinatown trying to figure out what to do next. My feeling of unease at making the wrong decision concerning Edward George's destination after leaving Albuquerque still gnawed at my guts, but this was the only lead I had.
  
  He had mentioned the city favorably to Marta. Edward George didn't like to gamble. He obviously knew the dangers of dealing with Madame Lin. That was all I had to go on. Slim, very slim, yet I had to turn it into positive results. I had contacted Hawk, and he hadn't turned up anything more checking out the passengers. The chance existed that George had flown off in the helicopter — still untraced — and had taken a private plane, without a flight plan being filed. Or he could have driven to El Paso or Denver or Phoenix and taken a flight from those cities.
  
  My hunch might be all that would keep the world from catastrophic war, and the possibility of being wrong burned ulcers into my stomach.
  
  "It all looks familiar, and yet it doesn't," said Marta in frustration. "When you're on a vacation, why bother memorizing your surroundings? You just enjoy them."
  
  "Madame Lin has several contact points near here," I said. "Let's slowly walk past them. Tell me if you see anything that strikes a responsive chord in your mind."
  
  "Okay, Nick, but I can't promise."
  
  I squeezed her arm reassuringly. I wished I felt the confidence I projected to her. We sauntered along the crowded Grant Avenue, a couple idly passing time looking in the store windows. As we passed California Street, I noted we were entirely surrounded by Chinese. Only an occasional Occidental hurried down the streets now. The windows still held many of the tourist comeons, but more ivory figurines were in evidence. Jade carvings, intricate watercolors, and lacquered Chinese boxes replaced the cheap tin and plastic and cardboard.
  
  "Oh, Nick, this is hopeless," Marta exclaimed. "In spite of it all, I'm spending more time looking at things like that." She pointed to a potbellied ivory statue of Ho-tai.
  
  "If you rub his belly, he's supposed to bring you good luck," I said. While I admired the skill in carving the statue, I was more engrossed in studying the proprietor of the shop. A wizened old man, hunched over his counter — he reminded me of someone I'd met once.
  
  Once, in Hong Kong. The scene returned vividly. He was old, yes, but not as ancient and honorable as he tried to appear now. Lo Sung had been involved in an international heroin smuggling network, responsible for accepting the shipment from the Golden Triangle in Vietnam and Laos and refining the poppies to a more salable product — opium and heroin. We had met, I had killed several of his bodyguards, we had fought.
  
  I thought Lo Sung had died from the several bullets Wilhelmina had poured into his fragile body. Apparently, like all Orientals, the frailness covered a tenacity of life that I had misjudged.
  
  "May I aid you?" he asked, bowing low. I tried to read recognition into his body language. He covered himself well. We might have been nothing more than a pair of tourists likely to purchase an expensive trinket.
  
  "How much for the Ho-tai?" I asked, my eyes never leaving him.
  
  "Your tastes are most excellent," he said, giving another low bow. "A good luck statue can be most highly treasured in these days of uncertainty."
  
  "Fifteen dollars?" asked Marta, fingering the potbelly. She seemed unaware of the tension in the air. Or perhaps only I felt it.
  
  "Such a finely carved figurine could not be had for twice that price," he said.
  
  The haggling went on. I allowed Marta to engage Lo Sung as I walked around the small shop, pretending to examine the other trinkets. A curtained doorway led back into the depths of the store. This wasn't curious in itself but the heavy steel door with the most modern of locks a few feet behind the curtain struck me as out of place. Maybe protecting his valuable stock required such a door, I told myself. Checking to make sure that Lo Sung faced the other direction, I took a quick excursion down the hallway to check out the door. Not only did he have a vault door mounted in the hall, he used a sophisticated alarm system, too. A photocell would send out an alarm to somewhere if the door opened, providing the intricate locks could be cracked. No matter if the door were broken open or normally used, that photocell would alert others.
  
  I slid back into the shop just as Lo Sung turned away from Marta, the ivory figurine in his gnarled hands. He shuffled over to the cash register and rang up the sale. Marta had purchased it for twenty-three dollars, a good price for an ivory statue.
  
  "Does any other item in my humble shop catch your fancy?" Lo Sung asked me. I detected no sarcasm, no hint that he was anything but the legitimate storekeeper he seemed to be.
  
  "That should do us. Come along, dear," I said, taking Malta's elbow and pulling her from the store. In the street in front of the shop, I asked, "Do you remember having been in that place before?"
  
  "No, but I seem to remember Ed taking us to a little tea shop somewhere nearby. I think it might be around this corner. I'd stopped and looked in this window before we decided to get some food."
  
  "Good," I said, trying to mentally reconstruct the layout of the store, and where the passageway with the steel vault door might lead. "Let's try around the corner."
  
  "That's it!" she cried.
  
  I nodded slowly. The tea shop of Wang Foo. A notorious meeting spot for Chinese agents from up and down the West Coast. Had George sold out much earlier than the beginning of Project Eighth Card? He could have passed along invaluable information to the Chinese agents over a ten-year period. I'd have to tell Hawk and have him check more carefully into Edward George's background, his trips to San Francisco, everything concerning the man.
  
  That communication would have to wait. The tea shop bustled with activity, Chinese coming and going constantly. Very seldom did I hear any language but the singsong Mandarin Chinese. We had truly come into another world, buried in the middle of a great American city.
  
  "I don't like this, Nick," protested Marta. "You know how you sometimes get the feeling that someone's watching you? I feel that way right now."
  
  "Don't worry. It's just your imagination." I could lie well when I had to. I had already spotted three Chinese youths lounging in doorways, their dark eyes never leaving us as we made our way along the littered streets. Descending into the gloom of the tea shop only increased Malta's nervousness. I held her arm firmly, guiding her to a table at one side of the small shop. When our eyes had adjusted to the dim lighting, we saw that we were the only nonChinese in the shop.
  
  A waiter came to us, his gliding walk making me think he had ballbearings instead of feet. He bowed low and in poor English asked, "You want order?"
  
  "Oolong tea," I said, "for two."
  
  He bobbed twice and turned, gliding away on silent feet. I leaned back in the chair, opened the front of my jacket so that Wilhelmina rested easily in my shoulder holster. The tendons in my right arm tensed and relaxed, ready to receive Hugo in a flash, if necessary. On the surface, the tea shop of Wang Foo ran quietly and with no fuss. The tension just under that peaceful facade told me that all hell might break loose at any second.
  
  The tea came, was poured into the porcelain cups, was approved. The waiter left again, wordlessly.
  
  "Nick," said Marta.
  
  "I know," I said. "Why don't you go back to the hotel? The diversion might be enough to get me into that back room. I don't think you're in any danger. Lo Sung realizes I'm the one they really want."
  
  "Lo Sung? Who's that?"
  
  "The charming old gentleman who sold you the ivory statue. He was a kingpin in the heroin trade ten years ago. It looks as if he's moved into other endeavors."
  
  "Nick, will you be alright?" Her hand pressed warmly against my wrist. I smiled winningly and nodded.
  
  "Go on. Everything is running along just fine now. I've got a sixth sense about these things. George is around here, and I'll find him." Conviction rang in my words. What I told her was the truth this time. It had been a long shot, and I had begun to feel it had finally paid off. The activity around the tea shop had the air of espionage rather than smuggling.
  
  "Do you want me to try to contact Hawk?"
  
  "You couldn't get through to him," I said, shaking my head. "Just go to the hotel and wait for me. You'll be okay. If you run into any trouble, call a cop. The last thing in the world these people want is notoriety."
  
  She hastily kissed me and left, her trim form blending with the shadows as she went up the steps leading to the street and the teeming crowds along Grant Avenue. I used the diversion of her departure to sidle along the wall and slip behind a nearby curtain.
  
  A duplicate of the door in Lo Sung's shop prevented me from penetrating further into the maze of corridors between the buildings. I checked and the same type of photocell blocked the path. Pressing my ear against the steel door, I heard faint murmurings from within. I had no idea at all what was going on — but it would no doubt interest me greatly if I could find out.
  
  Shuffling noises from the entrance behind me alerted me in time to melt into the shadows. A hunched Chinese entered, muttering to himself. He looked neither left nor right as he went to the steel door. I flattened myself even more into a convenient dark alcove and waited for him to open the door. He pushed on through. I watched as the vault door slowly started closing by itself. Since the Chinaman had continued along the hallway allowing the door to tend to itself, I leaped over the photobeam and squeezed between doorframe and case-hardened steel door seconds before it securely locked again.
  
  The hall on this side of the door looked no different, but the sound of people talking came more distinctly. I cautiously moved, Wilhelmina comforting in my hand. Closed doors lined the hall. One at the end stood partially open. Peering through it, my heart leaped into my throat at the sight.
  
  Victory!
  
  Seated at a plain wooden table, Edward George motioned violently to an unseen person across the room. Changing position and widening the crack in the door allowed me to see Madame Lin, dainty hands on her hips, not looking at all pleased with what George told her.
  
  "Too high," she snorted, her nostrils flaring delicately. "I will pay only the amount already agreed upon."
  
  "This," said George, tapping the small black box on the table in front of him, "is worth a dozen times as much, and you know it. Think of the political coup, Madame Lin."
  
  Politics does not concern you," she said snappishly. "We have had a pleasant working arrangement in the past. Why do you now attempt to change it by futilely demanding more money?"
  
  "I've never had a gadget as valuable as this before," George said, indolently lounging back in his chair and smiling at the woman. "It's got to be worth half a million."
  
  "The price is out of the question. But perhaps," she said, her voice hinting at worlds of riches other than money, "something else might be arranged."
  
  "Such as?" George demanded suspiciously.
  
  "The People's Republic is on the verge of breaking into the twentieth century. We require scientists and technicians in all disciplines. An agreement might be reached that would allow you to live in luxury the remainder of your life — in exchange for the high-voltage switching device and your continued research services."
  
  "No deal," said George quickly. "I may have sold out my country, but I'm not about to leave it."
  
  "You can have whatever luxuries you have here," the woman pressed. "Stereo, car, lavish quarters, all the women you could desire — and all of whom desire you."
  
  "Commies tend to be puritanical. Would you really pimp women for me?"
  
  "Puritanical?" Madame Lin laughed. "Perhaps our moral system seems so to you, but we are most pragmatic. We will furnish whatever you need to continue in your brilliant work."
  
  "A Chinese laser," mused George. "That would really make the Russians come to a boil. You could sit along your border and zap them at will. Knock their most sophisticated interceptors from the sky, even burn their satellites in orbit."
  
  "It can be done. You have shown that," Madame Lin cooed almost hypnotically.
  
  George shook himself. "Money, one half million dollars. Nothing else."
  
  "I can see your mind is set. Very well, I will order the payment made in the usual manner. To your Swiss bank account?"
  
  "Yes," he said, fondly running his fingers over the black, crackled surface of the switching device.
  
  I had heard more than enough. Pulling back on the toggles of my Luger, I shoved into the room, the barrel leveled at a point midway between the two. In this way, I could swing and shoot either Madame Lin or Edward George if they attempted to escape. I doubted both would be able to work in concert against me.
  
  "I'll remove temptation from your path, Dr. George," I told him. "Let me have the laser switching device."
  
  "You don't scare me, Carter," raged the scientist, standing and kicking over his chair. "If you take another step, I'll destroy the switch. I think you know its circuits are etched on frangible glass."
  
  "One little scratch will completely destroy it," I said. "But that's not my affair. If I can't recover it, I'm to destroy it. Either way is okay by me."
  
  "You fool!" cried Madame Lin, already moving. I swung Wilhelmina around and covered her.
  
  "Hold it, Madame Lin. Don't move."
  
  "Mr. Carter," the Oriental woman aid in her low, seductive voice. "I have underestimated you. I suppose it would be useless to make an offer to you?"
  
  "To turn traitor? Positively useless," I assured her.
  
  "Alas, the best agents tend to be the most dedicated, also," she said, flicking open her fan with a swift movement of her wrist.
  
  I felt panic flare inside of me. She had made no threatening gestures, yet I feared that fan for some reason. It appeared harmless enough. The lacquered pattern on it depicted a pastoral scene like hundreds of others I'd seen on fans. She moved it rapidly, fanning herself.
  
  The glint of light off the edge of the fan warned me. She saw the recognition in my eyes and instantly sent the fan spinning through the air. Ducking, the razor-edged fan whistled above my head, missing by scant inches. I heard a dull thunk and saw the fan embedded a full three inches into the wooden wall behind me. If that had connected, it would have sent my head leaping from my torso.
  
  "Hold it!" I cried, bringing Wilhelmina to bear, but I had become too engrossed with Madame Lin. George kicked, his foot connecting with my right wrist. My Luger flew like a blue steel bird and crashed into the far wall. Even before I felt the butt of my gun leave my grasp, I tensed my forearm and sent the spring-loaded Hugo rushing to fill the void. I spun completely around and got behind George, my knife pressing into his kidney while my left arm circled his neck.
  
  Madame Lin had another of the deadly-edged fans open, standing and waiting for the opportunity to send it spinning into my throat. I moved the point of my knife around until it dug into George's side.
  
  "Drop the fan," I ordered. "I'll run this blade all the way to the hilt in his side if you don't."
  
  "Mr. Carter, do you think this miserable slug's life means a thing to me? Kill him."
  
  I wanted George alive — for the moment. I tightened my grip to choke him out while I drove the butt end of the knife into his kidney. He sputtered and went limp, unconscious. I dropped George to the floor and faced the deadly fan, a sliver of high-grade steel in my own hand. Hugo was more than a match for any circular sawblade.
  
  "Is this the way you want it, Madame Lin? Just the two of us fighting it out over the switching device?"
  
  We circled one another warily, jockeying for the right opening. I had no chivalrous thoughts to dissuade me from killing her if the chance presented itself. Among the ranks of the top spies, gender means nothing. Life and death were the commodities we traded, and very few of us ever died of old age.
  
  I lunged, the point of my blade seeking her wrist. She spun the fan around and neatly blocked Hugo's blood-lusting reach. Sparks flew off the metal-to-metal contact, and I felt the impact all the way up my arm. I retreated, still circling, keeping the table between us now. I made a wild grab for the small black box, and Madame Lin almost cut off my hand. The edge of her fan buried a full inch into the softwood table. I kicked out and shoved the table forcefully toward her. The edge of the fan snapped off, but she lightly danced out of the way.
  
  "Give it up, Madame Lin," I urged. "You know that you'll be out free in a couple of weeks."
  
  "I cannot lose face, Mr. Carter. My effectiveness as a spy in your country would be jeopardized. I have no desire to see my picture in every postal office. No, Mr. Carter, I will bargain with you."
  
  "Bargain with what?" I scooped up the switching device and held it close to my body, protecting it, remembering what Hawk had said about recovering it intact.
  
  "The switching device for Marta Burlison."
  
  "What?"
  
  "We captured her as she left the tea shop. Wang Foo is a most accomplished kidnapper. She is unharmed, but unless you surrender the switch, that condition might not last much longer."
  
  I came out of the knife-fighting crouch and tried to guess if she told the truth. Too late I saw the ghost of a smile on her lips and heard the faint shuffle of slippered feet behind me. A sudden rush of air brought a pipe smashing down onto my head. I fell heavily, dropping both Hugo and the laser cannon switching device.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  I came to, almost instantly awake. I strained and fought against the ropes on my hands and feet. Chafing my wrists produced a little slack. I would have to play Houdini to get free.
  
  "So, Mr. Carter, you return to the land of the sentient," came Madame Lin's mocking voice. "Do not struggle so. The ropes were purposefully tied. I am sure you can work free with only a few minutes of diligent effort."
  
  She walked around in front of me, silhouetted by a single bare bulb dangling from a wire that vanished into the ceiling. She looked like a Junebug in the iridescent gree sheath dress. Her face vanished into shadows, but the set of her body told me she thought she'd won.
  
  From where I sat tied, it looked that way, too.
  
  "It has been interesting dealing with you, Mr. Carter," she continued. "Pitting my efforts against your not inconsiderable talents has been instructive. I feel now that I can meet and best any of the remaining American agents I might encounter in future work. After all, haven't I defeated your country's finest?"
  
  She laughed and I tensed, my arms straining even more against the rough hemp ropes binding me. I chafed my wrists until the blood flowed, but I was mad. I wanted nothing more than to wrap my fingers around her swanlike throat and squeeze until the last vestiges of life fled her delicate body.
  
  "So quiet? Do you acknowledge defeat so easily?"
  
  "I've still got a few trumps up my sleeve," I said with more bravado than I felt. "You've won the battle but not the war."
  
  "No? I do have Marta Burlison. I believe I played that card at a most opportune time. And now I have the laser control switching device within my grasp. I fear I must conclude my dealings with Dr. George on a basis not of my choosing. Being the pawn of bureaucrats can be tedious, don't you agree?"
  
  "You're letting him live?"
  
  "The director of the Social Affairs Department feels Dr. George might prove useful at some future date. My objections were overruled." She made a disparaging gesture as she moved, no longer shielding my eyes from the bare one hundred watt bulb. I squinted, trying to see more of the room around me.
  
  "What are you going to do with Marta?"
  
  "Eliminate her, of course. She has blundered into an area where she has no protection at all — now that you have been removed from the game."
  
  "And how am I to be removed? Permanently or just for this round?"
  
  She laughed, a musical sound far more menacing than if she'd sneered or threatened. I believed this woman capable of any cruelty.
  
  "Ah, Mr. Carter, I fear it is a permanent removal. This removal will enhance my prestige enormously and lend greater force to my words in the future."
  
  "Such as eliminating discarded pawns like Edward George."
  
  "That is but one small area. I desire greater authority in the field. I am capable of doubling the efficiency of my country's field agents, if allowed to do so. Removing you permanently from the game allows me that much more latitude now, and in the future."
  
  "A bullet through the head? Or are you going to cut my throat with that fan of yours?" I couldn't get the razor sharpness of the edge of her fan out of my mind. The glint of light against the surgical steel rim still made me flinch. She unfolded her fan dexterously, fanned herself a few times, then folded it back into a slender cylinder.
  
  "I am not an assassin, Mr. Carter. Very seldom do I personally take a life. Rather, I prefer to be inventive about such things. Your death will be accidental. You have become trapped in this cellar. Why? Who can say where an Occidental tourist might probe in his wanderings? The door locked from the outside, an unfortunate occurrence because of the voracious rats in this part of the city. So near the wharf," she sighed.
  
  "Eaten by rats!"
  
  "Succinctly put, Mr. Carter. I now leave you to entertain your guests. Do try to remember they are simply starved. There is no need for hors d'oeuvres. They desire only the entree. Have a nice day, Mr. Carter."
  
  With that, Madame Lin made her exit. I fought the ropes on the chair. As she had said, the bonds soon yielded to my frantic jerkings. I rubbed my wrists and tried to staunch the flow of blood. When circulation had returned, I began exploring the small square cellar room. The solid stone walls must have withstood earthquakes more potent than anything I could bring to bear against them. The door mocked my efforts to open it. The ubiquitous steel vault door had been installed and was barred on the outside. No lock to pick, no chance of reaching around the doorjamb and lifting the bar existed. The floor of poured concrete could withstand the scratching and digging of even Edmund Dante. I didn't have the long years that the Count of Monte Cristo had, either. Small holes along the sides of the room were already admitting large brown rats.
  
  I climbed up onto the chair, reflecting on how cruel this torture actually was. Madame Lin had left the light burning so that I saw my fate. In the dark, it might be worse, but I wouldn't debate that point right now. Seeing the sharp incisors and the ratty grins on their snouts did nothing to lift my spirits. The blood on my wrists attracted them. They sensed weakness and moved as a furry army.
  
  I kicked out and sent one flying. It squealed obscenely, but the others pounced. I managed to bat them away, too. One landed, back broken, only to be devoured by his one-time comrades. Seeing the picked bones drained me even more.
  
  Checking the ceiling of the cell gave me little cause for joy. The heavy wooden planking that formed the floor of the room above would require a crowbar to remove. I had nothing, not even Hugo. The single strand of electrical cord dangling down to support the light bulb seemed a puny enough weapon.
  
  Or was it?
  
  I clambered onto the chair, kicking off the biting rodents intent on stripping the flesh from my legs. My blood flowed from a dozen rat-gnawed spots. I jumped and tried to hang from the rafters by pressing my feet against one side while holding another between thumb and fingers. The strain rapidly told on me. I had to swing back down. The seat of the chair surged with writhing, squeaking, furry brown appetites.
  
  "Ai!" I cried out involuntarily.
  
  The pain lancing up my legs almost caused me to slip from my perch. To fall onto the floor would be my end. More and more of the rats poured in through the small holes craftily bored through the stone walls. If I had been able to stop up those holes with my shirt, I might have stood a small chance. But it was too late now for any tactic like that. There were too many rats already in the room for me to fight off.
  
  I felt them working their way up my legs, nipping at my thighs, jumping high and snapping at my crotch like dogs that have treed their quarry. I swung back up to my precarious perch. A few of the rats fell heavily to the floor, running away squealing, only to return when their fright had passed. Still others moved relentlessly over my body, intent on eating supper — me.
  
  I would have to escape quickly or end up as a meal for these creatures. One walked up my chest and peered directly into my eyes. I swear he smiled and winked at me.
  
  Still hanging, I grabbed out for the electrical cord. I pulled it to me and forced the rats off my body with the incandescent bulb. I smashed the glass envelope carefully, leaving the tungsten wire inside intact. It continued to glow white-hot for a few seconds until the oxygen in the air oxidized the filament. This was more than enough time to set the tinder-dry wood of the ceiling afire. I watched the tiny flames licking at the wood, uncertain whether to continue or not.
  
  The squealing of the rats below told me that it was better to die in a fire than to be devoured alive. A few of the less hardy souls among the rats were already running for their stony exits. The fire spread, aided by continued application of the short circuiting remnants of the light bulb.
  
  The cellar was momentarily plunged into darkness as a fuse failed. I had to drop to the floor. Rats attacked, biting and slashing with their sharp teeth. I fought them off as best I could, demanding out loud, "Catch fire, dammit, catch fire and burn this whole goddamn place to the ground!"
  
  The wood responded. Soon burning brightly, the dried timber began turning to blackened beams. The planking was slower to ignite but it caught fire, too. Choking smoke filled the room, causing me to fall to hands and knees to breathe. Only one or two of the bravest rats remained. Then they, too, abandoned the room, not wanting a barbequed supper.
  
  The fire had saved me from the rats. What could save me from the fire? There didn't seem to be anything. The heat singed my eyebrows and I gagged on the thick, billowing clouds of smoke.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Eleven
  
  
  
  
  I huddled into one corner of the room, the blazing fire blistering my back. The only consolation I had was the departure of the rats. They had run frightened through their fist-sized getaway holes, incensed at losing a meal. I began to wish I'd fallen through the rabbit hole like Alice and could take one of the wafers marked "Eat Me." I'd fight off the rats on their own terms rather than being burned alive.
  
  As my shirt and skin began to smoulder, I held up my arm to protect my eyes. The rafters gave way in the center of the room. For a moment, all motion stopped. With a sudden rush of hot air, it was like being trapped in the bottom of a blast furnace. All the fire and heat surged along this new chimney.
  
  Seeing my chance, I fought through the shower of sparks, jumped onto the burning chair, and kicked hard, aiming for the edges of the burning hole in the ceiling. Intense pain lanced through my hands and arms as I dragged myself over the side of the hole. I began crawling through the fire on the floor, neglecting to feel the searing agony until I shoved my way into the next room. Even though smoke filled the room, the fire had yet to reach it.
  
  Keeping low to avoid the heavy smoke, I crawled to the next door and found myself in the center of Wang Foo's tea shop. The customers had long since been driven out with the cries of "Fire!"
  
  In the distance, out in the street, I heard the howl of sirens. I started up the stairs, winced at the pain in my hands, arms, and back, then saw my shirt burst into flames. The smouldering embers in the cloth had finally found enough oxygen to come to full-bodied life.
  
  I bolted into the street where I immediately dove and began rolling. The smelly wet garbage proved my salvation. Rolling through the garbage that disgraced the gutters, I quickly smothered the flames threatening to devour me alive.
  
  Sitting up, I saw a small circle of expressionless Chinese faces around me. I stood, bowed slightly, and walked off on shaky legs just as the fire engine squealed to a halt in the narrow street. I didn't stay to watch them put out the fire I'd started. In this section of Chinatown, if the fire fighters didn't do an adequate job, entire blocks would soon be burning.
  
  The pain wracking my body made me dizzy. I staggered along, but few paid me notice. They were too busy watching the firemen unlimber the long hoses and begin experimentally squirting water into the two-story-high flames. Catching my breath, gusting out the smoke clogging my lungs, I tried to push aside all the pain I felt.
  
  My hands had been charred black. They would be hurting like hell as soon as the shock wore off. My back was a mass of blisters, and I guessed my eyebrows and eyelashes had been burned away by the intense heat.
  
  Burning brighter now than even the fire a block away was my need for revenge. Madame Lin had been a worthy opponent up to this point. I had treated her with the detachment another foreign agent deserved. Now my feelings toward the woman had turned personal. I wanted revenge. My revenge included robbing her of the high-voltage laser switching device — then I would decide what further action to take.
  
  I vowed that it wouldn't be pleasant for her.
  
  Settling my mind, willing away the pain, I dabbed mud from the street onto my wounds to keep off the air. My strength came back slowly but it did return. I was hardly fit enough to go a fifteen-round championship fight with a contender, but I had conquered the pain raging through my body. I clenched my hands, felt the skin tighten and break, but continued until I had mobility and dexterity back. Soon, in an hour or a day, my body would exact its toll from me and simply quit.
  
  Until then, I had a job to do.
  
  I watched the crowd pushed back as the fire grew in intensity. One man in particular caught my eye. Lo Sung shuffled away from the crowd, went to a long black limousine, and hastily got into the backseat. Curtains all around prevented anyone from looking in — or out.
  
  My body reacted before my dazed mind fully comprehended what I had to do. I ran across the street and grabbed onto the back bumper. The driver gunned the engine, and my arms almost ripped from their shoulder sockets. I danced along behind the speeding car for a few paces, then kicked hard and succeeded in getting my body precariously up and onto the bumper. Hanging on wasn't as difficult as I'd thought it would be in my weakened condition.
  
  I even relaxed a little. Wrapped around the back bumper, I became part of the car as it raced into the foggy night. Worry that some well-meaning pedestrian might see me and call the police slowly diminished as I realized visibility was less than fifty feet now. The cold tendrils of San Francisco fog wrapped around me, chilling me to the bone. It was the best available medicine for my burns.
  
  As the car rushed up Columbus Avenue, I made out the spire of Coit Tower to the right as the fog parted and closed in never-ending patterns. I almost fell off when the car began the long climb up Filbert Street. The fog cleared slightly, and I had an unobstructed view down the long, long hill. I clung on for dear life, hoping that Lo Sung wasn't simply going for a joy ride. This had to lead me to Madame Lin or it would be all over for me. Relief flooded my mind as quick turns put us on Van Ness and then Lombard Street going west toward the Presidio.
  
  I tried to imagine the kind of rendezvous that Madame Lin would prefer. Near the ocean, I guessed. This allowed relatively unnoticed comings and goings from freighters just off the coast. As Lombard faded into Lincoln Boulevard, I knew we would press right on to the ocean. The abandoned gun emplacements provided a warren of concrete tunnels that still attracted the occasional tourist.
  
  As we passed the Palace of the Legion of Honor and headed on a back road away from Ft. Miley, I knew my suspicions were justified. We would probably end up at Ft. Funston. The bumping along the unkept road almost tossed me to the ground several times. Grimly, I held on. This had long since ceased to be solely a matter of duty with me. Personal pride had entered the picture in a big way.
  
  From the start, I'd been pushed around like a pawn in a gigantic chess match. Hawk had sent me into battle with scarcely any briefing. I'd jumped to a conclusion carefully nurtured by Edward George that Dr. Sutter was the culprit responsible for Richard's death and the repeated sabotage on Project Eighth Card. By the time I learned otherwise, Madame Lin had tried to kill me, George had tried to kill me, everyone had taken their turn at trying to kill me.
  
  I'd been kicked about, and having the laser switching device snatched from my hands back at the tea shop added insult to my numerous injuries. Having Marta Burlison in Madame Lin's hands only turned hot anger into deadly cold rage on my part.
  
  As the limousine took a sharp corner, I dropped off. I sensed a slowing in the car's headlong flight. Their base must be near. If I proceeded on foot, I could gain more information — and something as important: weapons.
  
  The engine noises died suddenly. I skirted the road and rounded the bend to see Lo Sung emerge from the car and head toward the dark square of one of the coastal defense tunnels left after World War II. He vanished, not a light showing anywhere along the way. I crept closer, keeping my advance as silent as possible.
  
  The driver of the car lounged against the front fender. I watched as he carefully pulled out a small pouch and a pipe. Taking a dark cylinder from the pouch, he scraped particles into the pipe bowl, lit it, and sighed as he puffed deeply, holding the smoke in his lungs as long as possible before exhaling. The pungent aroma of hashish reached my nostrils. Eliminating a stoned chauffeur seemed easy, even for someone in my debilitated condition.
  
  I rounded the car, gauged the distance, and then launched myself through the air. One arm circled the dope-smoking man's throat while my other hand mashed the hash pipe into his mouth and crushed his nostrils with a powerful pinch.
  
  He struggled less than ten seconds before he passed out. I didn't want anyone awakening behind me and giving alarm. I maintained the choke hold until I was certain he was dead. Allowing his lifeless body to slide to the ground, I spun off the hood of the car and crouched beside the corpse. A rapid search lifted my flagging spirits.
  
  In one pocket was Wilhelmina, and strapped to a leg was Hugo. I didn't know if this was the man who had slugged me in the rabbit warrens behind the tea shop or not. Just possessing my weapons indicted him — and I already had been judge, jury, and executioner.
  
  The heft of the Luger in my right hand and the familiar hilt of Hugo weighing down my left gave me added confidence. I padded off in the direction Lo Sung had taken. The mouth of the concrete tunnel had deteriorated since the war. Originally intended to allow forklifts and other heavy equipment to supply the sixteen-inch coastal guns at the far end of the tunnel, there was scant reason for the government to maintain this complex now. Ft. Funston provided a perfect hiding place for Madame Lin.
  
  Who would ever search for a foreign agent in the midst of an abandoned military base?
  
  I edged into the tunnel, proceeding with the utmost caution. The darkness wrapped me like a velvet blanket. The air inside was humid, ancient, and unstirring. Tiny signs of others passing this way recently kept me on the right trail. At every branching of the tunnel, I checked for several yards in each direction for fresh clues. Tracking in this environment caused my pulse to race and adrenaline to pound through my arteries. I felt like a jungle cat closing on its prey.
  
  No longer was I the prey; I had become the predator. I liked the feeling.
  
  Pressure against my left ankle caused me to hesitate. Gently, I reached down and felt the string across the tunnel. A trip wire. Following it to the right, I found a small black box. I couldn't decide if it was high explosive or some alarm system designed to alert the others farther down the tunnel.
  
  Stepping over it, I continued moving in the all-encompassing blackness. I cursed my bad luck in not bringing along a flashlight. The limousine probably had one in the glove compartment. Lo Sung had not shown a flash, but others might have met and guided him once they were deep enough inside.
  
  I stiffened, aware that an electric tension had entered the fetid air. I felt around on the ground for a broken trip wire. I found nothing. Still, the sixth sense that had kept me alive for so long screamed that something was wrong. I ran my hands over the wall and found it. A photocell. Since I hadn't seen any telltale glow, it probably used either an infrared or ultraviolet beam. And I had blundered along and broken that beam.
  
  To turn back or forge ahead. Which? Ahead lay a trap, that I knew with deadly certainty. The photocell had been waist high, which prevented it from being tripped by a stray dog or cat. Only a man or a man-sized object would trigger it.
  
  I ran forward to meet the ambush. I was tired of being carelessly batted around by everyone else. It was high time Nick Carter, Killmaster, fought back.
  
  I got my wish almost immediately. A tiny snick of an automatic's slide coming back to cock a weapon warned me. I fired in the direction of the sound and was rewarded by an ear-piercing shriek and a crash as a body fell forward.
  
  Then all hell broke loose.
  
  Machine guns spat foot-long gouts of flame from their bores. Heavy slugs ripped through the air where my head had been a fraction of a second earlier. I hit and rolled and kept rolling. All the while, Wilhelmina fired shot after precise shot. I was heartened by the cessation of several of the machine guns and anguished screeches from men wielding the automatic pistols.
  
  The faint shuffling of more feet against the concrete floor warned me of reinforcements arriving. These men might not be shooting blind. The possibility of a firefight in the darkness must have occurred to Madame Lin. These men might be equipped with infrared goggles. I'd stand out like a thumb with an orange bandage.
  
  Finding a side tunnel, I took off at a dead run, blundering along, stumbling in the darkness many times. When I came to another branching tunnel, I slid down this for a few feet, then dropped to my belly and waited.
  
  Wilhelmina rested in my hand, a staunch ally capable of eliminating more of Madame Lin's henchmen. And when Wilhelmina tired, I still had Hugo. They had meant that ambush to be a bloodbath. It had been — but it was their blood that had flowed swiftly. And more would be spilled before the night was over.
  
  Nick Carter, Killmaster, would see to that.
  
  
  
  
  
  * * *
  
  
  The dark hampered them more than it did me. I heard the vibrations of their feet pounding heavily as they pursued ghosts through the concrete tunnels. Finally, scared of shooting each other and deciding that, although it made them prime targets, the need for light outweighed other concerns, they began coming and going, flashlights and machine guns held out in front of their bodies. I allowed two patrols to pass by. When the third man, alone, passed my position, Hugo drank deeply of his blood.
  
  Only the strangling noise could be heard, then total silence. I carefully pulled the body back into the side tunnel, making sure that none of the others heard. I hefted the Heckler and Koch machine gun, admiring the lightness and versatility. I judged where the other patrol would be along the tunnel, then opened up with ear-splitting reverberations.
  
  One quick burst was all I took time for. I ducked back and waited. The survivors of the patrol began shooting behind them — at nothing. The bullets ricocheted down the tunnel and found targets in their own men. I smiled. Let them waste their bullets — and each other. As long as I stayed in the side tunnel, I remained relatively safe.
  
  I searched the body of the man I'd just killed. I lifted a small automatic from his pocket. In the dimness it appeared to be a Beretta Model 90. It added a little to my firepower when I tackled Madame Lin directly. Deciding the firefight couldn't continue much longer without more encitement, I flopped forward on my belly and worked the machine gun toward the edge and fired a few quick rounds in both directions. The immediate response from both sides was admirable.
  
  When the last bullet finished echoing down the tunnel, I began crawling in the direction I had come. The darkness again aided me. I fired twice, bringing death rattles from the throats of my targets both times.
  
  I duck-walked into the junction of the tunnels, taking the time to pick up a fallen flashlight and check in both directions. A few dead bodies littered the way to the left, but other than this grim signpost, I made out no difference in the directions. I began a cautious advance, sure that Madame Lin must have gotten her men under control by now.
  
  My sixth sense warned me of the presence of others a few seconds before I passed the mouth of the tunnel. I took a small piece of string, fastened it around the trigger of my machine gun, then tossed the weapon from me. As the string tightened, the gun chattered madly, spewing leaden death in all directions. The crossfire told me exactly where my would-be ambushers were.
  
  And that's where they both died.
  
  I put Wilhelmina into my holster and picked up another fallen pistol, feeling like and Wild West gunfighter. I continued straight ahead on the idea that those men were protecting this approach. My hunch paid off. A small rectangle of yellowish light appeared ahead. I moved more carefully now, sure that more guards would be posted. I was right.
  
  A pair stood at port arms on either side of the doorway. A problem. I could shoot them, but that would further alert the people in the room. I guessed this was Madame Lin's ultimate lair. Find her and I'd recover the laser switching device, Marta Burlison, and my pride.
  
  A bold approach appealed to me.
  
  Strutting like the cock of the walk, I shoved back my shoulders and swung my arms in exaggerated arcs until I came between the two guards. Both leveled their guns at me.
  
  "I want to see Madame Lin," I announced.
  
  "We got orders not to let nobody pass until she says," the one on the left told me.
  
  "Who…?" began the one on the right.
  
  That was as far as I let him get. My foot snapped out and crushed into his groin. I saw his eyes widen in surprise and pain before he passed out. I quickly recovered my balance and punched powerfully to the other guard's throat. I connected squarely with his Adam's apple, but pain lanced up my arm. I had forgotten the burns on the backs of my hands. Wincing with the agony, I delivered a second blow with the palm of my hand straight for the tip of his nose. Done properly, this drives the cartilege of the nose directly into the brain. Death isn't always instantaneous, but it was this time.
  
  I cut the first man's throat, wiping Hugo clean on his sleeve, then resheathed my knife and pulled out two of the captured automatics. Making sure that bullets rested in the chambers and both weapons were ready for action, I spun and aimed into the room.
  
  The level of lighting was low, but the fighting in the tunnels had been done in almost complete darkness. I squinted, one gun going to cover Edward George and the other trained squarely on Madame Lin. The scientist yelped as if he had sat on an anthill. Madame Lin's sole expression of surprise consisted of a slightly raised eyebrow.
  
  "So, Mr. Carter, you still live. Astonishing. It is not often I underestimate my opposition so much. You are most resourceful. My opinion of AXE increases daily."
  
  "Glad to hear it," I said dryly. "You know what I want."
  
  "Perhaps we can come to an agreement, Mr. Carter," the Oriental said. My gunsights remained centered on her torso as she moved slowly around the room. I continually glanced back and forth between her and Edward George. The scientist wasn't taking this very well. He must have thought I had nine lives like a cat.
  
  "Why should I barter?" I asked. "I have the upper hand."
  
  "Now," she agreed, her voice lilting and lyrical, almost mocking. I tried not to allow myself to become hypnotized by the woman.
  
  "I may lose it later," I conceded, "but that won't matter to you. I'll see to that."
  
  "You are so vindictive. I assure you that I bear you no personal animosity."
  
  "Just business as usual for you, Madame Lin," I said bitterly. "That'll come to a stop right now." My finger tightened on the automatic's trigger. She had nerves of steel. Madame Lin never changed expression although she must have read death in my face.
  
  Edward George distracted me at the crucial instant. He dove, his body level with the concrete floor. I felt the adrenaline pumping through my body. The scene moved in slow motion, but I couldn't force my own reactions to move even at normal speed. My right hand tracked George's progress as my finger closed on the trigger. An ear-splitting roar sounded and the heavy automatic bucked upward in my hand. The bullet creased the back of the man's head, sending a shower of blood and hair into the air. But he still lived. Dead men don't thrash and moan like that.
  
  "The switching device, N3," said Madame Lin levelly. She held the black box above her head, ready to smash it.
  
  "That won't matter," I said. "I can't let you get away."
  
  "Are you so sure the schematics for this device are safe? Dr. George destroyed them before stealing the switching device. Your vaunted laser cannon will be useless if I smash this prototype."
  
  I didn't hesitate an instant. "It doesn't matter. Even if I believed you — and I don't — I'd still have to stop you here and now." The muzzle of the pistol in my left hand rose and sighted between the woman's eyes. She still refused to show fear. I had to admire her self-control even as I felt burning hatred for her and her torturing ways.
  
  "Did you lie to me, doctor?" she asked of George. I should have been more wary of a trick. As my eyes went to the prone scientist, Madame Lin made her move. The woman threw the black box into my left hand, causing me to fire off-target. She vanished down one of the side corridors.
  
  The laser switching device lay at my feet, but the fraction of a second it look me to mentally check that off allowed Edward George to pull Marta Burlison around in front of him as a human shield. I had hardly noticed the woman was in the room, so intent had I been on Madame Lin and the laser switching device.
  
  "Okay, Carter, drop the guns or I'll kill her," he threatened. His arm circled her neck. His other hand pressed firmly into the back of her head. With a sudden jerk he could break her neck.
  
  "What do you hope to gain from this?"
  
  "Freedom. And the money she said she'd pay me."
  
  "I have the switching device," I said, nudging it with my foot but keeping my attention focused on the man. Marta's eyes widened with horror, but the gag in her mouth prevented her from crying out.
  
  "You just think you do," sneered George. Something in the man's tone alerted me.
  
  "What do you mean?"
  
  "That one's a fake. Why else do you think she still has me around? I've got the switching device hidden outside."
  
  "Where?"
  
  "That'd be telling. But check out the box. It's empty."
  
  I stooped and picked up the box. My fingers slid back one corner of crackled black metal plate. I peered inside. The box was empty.
  
  "I'm leaving now," the scientist said, edging toward the same tunnel Madame Lin had taken, keeping Malta's body between his and the barrels of my guns.
  
  "I don't think so, doctor," I said, my words drip ping ice water. "You've been watching too many movies. The human shield routine doesn't work."
  
  "What do you mean by that?" he asked, his arm tightening visibly on the slender neck.
  
  "Think it through. If she's dead, she's no good to you. So you can't kill her while I'm standing here with a gun. The gun is what gives me the edge. I have a job to do and that's preventing the laser switching device from falling into foreign hands. It says nothing about preserving life, even hers."
  
  "You're in love with her. You wouldn't risk her life."
  
  The words stung because they were close to the truth. I leveled the gun at George's head, saying, "Goodbye, Dr. George. You should have learned the rules to this game before you got in over your head."
  
  I fired.
  
  The sound in the small chamber deafened me. I watched Marta and Edward George slump down. I went over and pulled her free of his limp grip. She had fainted or perhaps been knocked out by the close passage of the bullet along her head. A cursory examination showed a shallow furrow bleeding profusely where the slug had raced on its way through to George's right eye. The bullet's punch had been decreased enough so that it had failed to exit the back of the man's head. It had bounced around inside his skull, scrambling his brains.
  
  He was very dead.
  
  "Are you alright?" I asked, shaking the woman. She moaned but gave no other sign of regaining consciousness. I didn't have time to waste. I pinched her earlob until a tiny crescent of blood bubbled out. The pain brought her around.
  
  "Nick," she said weakly. "You… you shot me!"
  
  "I shot him. I just grazed you. You're going to be alright. Maybe a slight concussion, but nothing serious."
  
  "He's dead?"
  
  "Yes," I said solemnly. "Now, do you know where the laser switch is? This one's a fake. George hid the prototype while he was dealing with Madame Lin." I had to shake Marta to bring her attention back to the problem at hand. She kept trying to look behind her at the fallen scientist's body.
  
  "I… don't know," she said, her voice distant and vague. "He had the real one in his car when he brought me here. She… Madame Lin promised me to him!" Marta shrieked hysterically. "Like I was a slave or something. She gave me to him!"
  
  "His car," I demanded, shaking her even harder. "Where did he leave it?"
  
  "Down that way. A long way," she said, gesturing toward the tunnel Madame Lin had taken. I felt a coldness spreading through me. If the Oriental woman had had enough time, she could have found find the real switching device and be on her way by now. The momentary picture of the entire laser cannon project failing flashed in front of my eyes.
  
  War. ICBMs arching over the pole, causing megadeaths throughout the world. A holocaust unknown in history.
  
  I pulled Marta to her feet and started down the tunnel. Time was running out for us — and for the world.
  
  
  
  
  
  Chapter Twelve
  
  
  
  
  "Hurry," I cried, tugging hard at Malta's arm. "We've got to leave here. Right now!" Those proved the magical words to get her into motion. I had no idea what tortures Madame Lin had promised her — or delivered — nor did I care right now. Just getting Marta free was an added bonus, but it would be a hollow victory if I didn't recover that laser switching device.
  
  "Wait," she said, dragging her heels and stopping me. "She has guards down there. Lots of them. All with machine guns."
  
  "So we go through them," I said. I got her moving again. We went into the darkness of the tunnel. The only difference between this concrete cavern and the others I'd so recently fought in was the damp wind blowing in my face. The ocean crashed and beat against the shoreline not too far in the distance. This added energy to my flagging body. The rigors of the past few hours had begun to take a toll on my stamina.
  
  I had only determination to run on now.
  
  I heard the slide of a machine gun snicking closed and reacted before the man could fire his weapon. I emptied the automatic in my left hand in the direction of the sound. Not content with that, I fired several more times with the gun in my right. A faint sliding noise assured me I had scored a direct hit. I almost tripped over the body when I came to it in the tunnel. I dropped the pistol in my left hand and searched the body for a replacement. All he had on him was the machine gun. I stuck the automatic from my right hand into my belt, not trusting a weapon to Marta in her condition, and hefted the new gun, making sure it was cocked and ready for action.
  
  "Hurry up," I told her, my own pace hardly more than a stagger. I kept the machine gun trained forward. Only once did I fire. The man never had a chance. The heavy slugs ripped through his body and made him dance around like a marionette with its strings operated by a spastic. He tumbled to the ground when I eased up on the trigger of the machine gun.
  
  "Oh, God, Nick, that's horrible," Marta said, her face pale and a hand covering her mouth as if she might vomit.
  
  "It'd be even more horrible if he'd done that to us. Don't you dare upchuck, not here. We've got to get out of these tunnels. They're a deathtrap for us. We have to get clear — fast."
  
  Almost as if the gunman had been listening to my words, another of Madame Lin's hechmen in the mouth of the tunnel cut loose with a hail of slugs that drove us to our bellies. I inched forward, my captured machine gun ready. The man outside was a pro. He didn't reveal himself, never once silhouetting his body against the pale gray of the foggy nighttime sky. The fog had started coming in again, cloaking the world in cold, damp blankets. A mournful foghorn sounded, and I saw a red flare explode in the sky. I didn't have to be a genius to realize Madame Lin's offshore pickup was signaling the go-ahead. Whether she had the switching device or not was something I'd have to find out.
  
  "This is going to be messy. Just keep your head down and keep your fingers in your ears," I told the frightened woman cowering at my side. Sticking her fingers in her ears wouldn't reduce the sound level much, but it gave her something to do and to think about besides how scared she was.
  
  I crawled infiltration-style until I found a spot less than twenty yards from the mouth of the tunnel. The man there still fired sporadically, enough to keep me honest. I couldn't rush him as long as he kept up that deadly barrage of bullets. But he stood between me and my ultimate goal. I had botched up enough on this mission.
  
  No more.
  
  He poked his head and gun around the corner. This was all the opening I needed. I had fired expertly with a half dozen different types of weapon. All that time on the firing range paid off right now. A single burst from the machine gun sent the man reeling backward.
  
  The way was open.
  
  I stood and crossed still another of those damnable photocells. A heavy steel shutter clanged down over the end of the tunnel, sealing it. I raced forward, futilely pounding the butt of the gun against it. The ringing metal only mocked me. Again, I was trapped.
  
  "What happened, Nick?" Marta asked, coming up beside me. "How'd this get over the tunnel?"
  
  "Madame Lin had it rigged so that the doors closed automatically, sort of like in a grocery store," I said bitterly. But I didn't let my anger stop me from minutely examining the steel plate that had dropped down. I knew it would probably be faster getting through this obstacle than retracing my way through the maze of tunnels and seeking out Madame Lin aboveground.
  
  "What are we going to do?"
  
  "We are going to lift until we can't stand it anymore — and then we're going to lift even harder," I told her, my fingers already under the edge of the plate. "The door dropped on the butt of the guard's machine gun. That's as good a use as any since the owner isn't going to need it anymore."
  
  "You killed him, too?"
  
  "I hope so," I said fervently. "Now lift, dammit. We've got to get free. I saw a flare. Madame Lin's going to rendezvous with her ship. We've got to be out and on the beach to stop her."
  
  Marta pressed close by me. In other circumstances, this would have been intimate, even cozy. But neither of us looked or smelled like humans, much less lovers. My skin was charred and pockmarked from the fire, I had been sweating with exertion, and I reeked of gunpowder and drying blood. Marta was scarely in better shape. Together we grunted and strained. The door moved barely an inch. As it did, I really put my back into it. The door swung out another few inches.
  
  "Put the machine gun — mine — under the door. Brace it open. Hurry," I panted, my body feeling as if it would break at any instant. Marta shoved the butt end of the machine gun into the concrete floor and balanced the barrel against the steel door.
  
  It held.
  
  I relaxed and let the strength slowly return to my aching muscles. Heaving again, I succeeded in lifting the door a few more inches.
  
  "Get under it," I ordered.
  
  "What about you, Nick?"
  
  "Do as I say. I'll be out in a second."
  
  She appeared doubtful but wasn't about to stay in the dark tunnel another instant. Marta got down and wriggled out, but too slowly. I felt my grip on the heavy metal plate slipping. If she didn't hurry, I might crush her.
  
  "Move that fanny," I cried, using my foot to help her along. It wasn't very gallant, but these weren't times when chivalry meant much. All that counted now was staying alive. She scooted through as my strength waned again. Puffing and feeling the tension in every muscle of my body, I looked at the scant inches between the bottom of the plate and the concrete. The gun wasn't the kind of support I felt I could trust my life to in this instance.
  
  But I didn't have any other choice. Lying on my back, I called out to Marta, "When I start under, I want you to lift like you're the next Olympic champion. Do it, now!"
  
  I kicked out with my feet and heaved upward as if pressing a million pounds. The door swung out enough for me to get under. Never in my life have I hurried more. The sharp metallic edge scrapped my chest, my belly, my upper legs, and then I scooted free from under the door. Marta relaxed and gustily sighed.
  
  I couldn't do anything but lie in the dirt panting, my heart pounding fiercely.
  
  "You did good, Marta," I finally said. "But there's still more to do. Where'd George park his car? We've got to check it out to see if the laser switching device is there."
  
  "Over in that direction, I think," she said, trembling with the strain of all she'd been through. I wanted to comfort her but didn't have the time to waste. She was a big girl; she'd be okay without the soothing words.
  
  I took off at a run, dragging out the automatic stuffed under my belt and making sure it was ready for action. A dark shape loomed ahead. I slowed my headlong pace and dropped down, wriggling forward on my belly.
  
  My prudence saved my life. I made a slight noise. This aroused someone in the backseat of the car who rose, trained a rifle, and began firing wildly. I squeezed off three quick shots to silence him permanently. Another shadow came around the front of the car. Two more shots dispatched him. The slide of my automatic stayed open after the last shot. I tossed the empty gun aside and pulled out my faithful Wilhelmina as I crouched next to the car. Listening until my ears ached, I heard nothing but the distant surf pounding against the beach and the occasional whine of the wind as it idly moved the thick blankets of fog to and fro.
  
  I peered up over the edge of the car door. Nothing. I moved cautiously but with all possible speed. I checked out the car, finding a small cut in the rear seat, the cushion stuffing pulled out. The space remaining was just the right size for the laser switching device. Madame Lin had found it first.
  
  "Damn," I said, "we're too late."
  
  "I'm sorry, Nick, I really am!" Marta cried. "I held you up. I kept you back. It's all my fault."
  
  I hardly heard her. This wasn't the time for placing blame, it was time for thinking. A mournful foghorn sounded once, twice, three times. The thick veils of fog parted enough for me to see the freighter a half mile off the coast.
  
  "That's it!" I shouted. "Madame Lin's heading for that ship. They've just given her the signal. To the beach. Hurry, dammit, hurry!" I pulled her along behind me like a captive balloon. We jogged to a bluff overlooking a sandy spit fifty feet below. A dark, huddle mass of men pushed against a rubber raft, trying to get it into the churning, boiling surf.
  
  "See them down there?" I asked Marta. Seeing her nod, I said, "Start shooting at them. Just like you're on a firing range. Slow, deliberate firing, trying to center each round. I want you to keep them from getting away."
  
  "What are you going to do, Nick?"
  
  "I'm going to get down there fast. Now start firing!"
  
  I had given her the rifle taken from the dead man in the backseat of George's car. I didn't wait to see if she'd obey. I hurtled down the winding, narrow path along the face of the cliff. My feet grew wings; I felt as if I flew like Mercury. The salt air gushed into my lungs and wiped away the aching tiredness I'd felt earlier. Power flowed into me, and I barely kept my footing on the steep path in my haste to get to the beach. The echoes of Malta's shots told me she was doing just as she'd been told. Some of the DIA training had stuck.
  
  Hitting the beach, I found myself the target of four different machine guns. It bothered me hardly more than a mosquito buzzing around my ears. I squeezed off round after round, Wilhelmina finding homes for each lead slug. The machine guns stopped firing. I felt invincible now.
  
  "Don't shoot!" cried the remaining crewman beside the rubber raft. "I'm not armed!"
  
  His hands flatted on top of his head. I almost believed him because of the storm cloud of anger on Madame Lin's face. She obviously exhorted him to get the raft into the choppy water and try paddling for the distant ship. I judged the freighter had anchored at least three hundred yards offshore. The shifting layers of fog tended to destroy my depth perception, though. However far the ship was, the crewman obviously figured he'd never make it.
  
  "So, Mr. Carter, it appears you have persisted and won. You are a trial for me."
  
  I had to keep reminding myself this lovely woman was ruthless and had attempted to murder me repeatedly, in the most gruesome fashions possible. My Luger centered on her. The crewman was only a pawn in this game, and I had just checked the queen.
  
  "The box," I said.
  
  "You have a disconcertingly one-track mind, Mr. Carter," she said, her voice still as silken-smooth as when she had informed me I would be left in the room with the ravenous rats. "I will deal with you. Every man has his price. I can make life much more enjoyable for you — in many ways. Together, the two of us might unlock all the Gates of Paradise. Not all my training has been in ways of death."
  
  "I don't doubt that, but I'm not interested."
  
  "Ah, you Americans. That Puritan work ethic intrudes in so many ways. It deprives you of real living."
  
  "No," I said. "Simple patriotism's responsible for the refusal. You don't hear much about it these days, but it still exists. My country needs that laser switch. And I'm going to take it."
  
  "Here it is, Mr. Carter." She tossed the black box into the sand at my feet. Kneeling down, never allowing my eyes to leave her, I picked up the switching device and forced my fingers under one of the metal sides. Gritting my teeth, I ripped back the cover to expose the delicate insides. The frangible glass gleamed whitely in the dull light and complex printed circuits etched onto the glass confused my mind with their deviousness.
  
  Then it happened.
  
  Faster than thought, Madame Lin pivoted, whirled out one of the damned surgical steel-edged fans of hers, and sent it spinning through the air. I barely managed to block that vicious attack, her fan knocking Wilhelmina into the sand.
  
  "Now, Mr. Carter," she said softly, "we shall see who has the upper hand." She circled, another fan flashing menacingly.
  
  Hugo leaped into my hand and buried hilt-deep in the crewman, who had finally come out of his shocked inaction and had tried to dive for my Luger. He rolled over and over, clutching his belly. I ignored him. He was completely out of the game. Only Madame Lin remained.
  
  "Give it up," I said. "You're beaten. I have the switching device and you don't have anything."
  
  "I still live. I can get another prototype from other Edward George. Many of your scientists are vulnerable to my wiles. I will find them and exploit their weaknesses."
  
  She continued to circle, the fan moving in a hypnotic figure eight pattern. She struck with the speed of a cobra. The fan slashed out, closed and then jabbed straight for my face. I parried with Hugo, feeling the clash of metal on metal, then grabbed her slender wrist. I squeezed hard, trying to crush fragile bones. My strength wasn't what it should be. I turned the bone-crushing grip into an arc that sent the woman tumbling onto the sand.
  
  Before I could finish her off with my knife, hands fumbled at my ankles. I fell forward heavily, twisting. The man I had stabbed in the belly still fought weakly, as if trying to make up for his earlier cowardice. He was more dead than alive, but I had to deal with him.
  
  It took longer than I'd thought it would. He refused to give up, perhaps knowing death was close and fearing it. When I stood, the bloody knife dripping in my hand, Madame Lin had gone. She had pushed the rubber raft into the murky black waters lapping against the beach and was now paddling furiously for the ship.
  
  I estimated my chances of swimming in the icy water and overtaking her. In my weakened condition, she would be able to fight me off easily, even if I managed to battle the Pacific Ocean successfully and reach the raft. I searched the scuffled sand, found Wilhelmina, checked the action to be sure no sand had entered, then sighted, holding the Luger in both hands.
  
  The iridescent green of Madame Lin's dress centered in my sights. I fired. I saw her slump forward. I lowered my sights to the edge of the rubber raft. I fired again. A hissing louder even than the surf sounded. I kept firing at the raft until Wilhelmina's slide locked back, no more bullets in her clip.
  
  The raft spun around and around, then went down into the cold Pacific waters. I waited, one of the fallen machine guns in my hand. No head bobbed, swimming for the ship. I don't remember how long I stood there watching, waiting, making certain Madame Lin was dead. The mournful hoot of the ship's horn sounded like a dirge. The crew weighed anchor, and the ship vanished into the gray cloak of the fog.
  
  Still there was no sign of Madame Lin. Finally, she had met her fate. I knew I should have felt elation at defeating such a cunning and powerful enemy. All that remained in me were aches, pains, and a need to sleep for a week.
  
  The silver speck appeared in the clear, blue sky over the desert. It shimmered and danced until the dull hum of a jet engine could be heard. Then the sky exploded with eye-searing fury. Over and over and over that deadly lance of coherent light lashed out at the target, slashing and cutting until only tiny fragments were left to rain down on the parched ground.
  
  "Look, up high. Can you see it?"
  
  I squinted in the direction Dr. Sutter pointed. I saw a momentary flare as the rocket high over our heads reentered the atmosphere. Then it was blotted out by the deadly surge of the laser. The tiny flare of friction from the atmosphere was swallowed in the cataclysm caused at the fringes of the ionosphere. The laser cannon continued to buzz and hum to itself, still ready to lash out with its death-dealing power.
  
  "There won't be any problems with the Russian ICBMs?" I asked.
  
  Sutter smirked, the first time I'd seen him this smug.
  
  "None whatsoever. The Russians are advanced in many things. Electronic Counter-Measures and now anti-ICBM systems, bah! They can't possibly slip anything past that." He pointed to the Eighth Card laser. The pride in his voice was reward enough for me.
  
  Hawk came over with Martha Burlison and said, "You can be proud, Or. Sutter. A good test. A Good weapon."
  
  "Thanks," said the portly scientist, not really listening. He was already drifting away to check dials and instrument readings. We watched him go, a man riding the euphoria of a successfully complete project.
  
  "What about Dr. Sutter's drinking and gambling?" asked Marta. "Is that going to be swept under the rug?"
  
  "No," said Hawk slowly. "We have recommended a long vacation for Dr. Sutter in Long Beach. A man of his talents shouldn't be wasted. He will be… rehabilitated."
  
  Marta nodded, the sunlight reflecting off her jet black hair and making her appear more beautiful than ever. I felt a lump in my throat just looking at her.
  
  "Uh, Mr. Hawk, could I speak with Nick in private?"
  
  Hawk gave me a knowing wink, then turned and followed Sutter into the control bunker.
  
  "Let's walk a bit, Nick," she said. "I want to talk. About us."
  
  "What about us?" I asked. I didn't think I could put my feelings into order. We had been close, very close. I'd been attracted to other women, but seldom in the way I was to Marta Burlison. In my business that was bad. I wasn't sure I wanted to hear what she had to say. It might end up being painful for both of us.
  
  "I don't know how to say this, Nick, so I'll come right out with it. I love you, I love you very much." My heart almost stopped beating when I heard those words. "But," she continued quickly, her eyes downcast, "I want to go off by myself. For a while, at least. I… I've got to set things right in my head. I've been so caught up in all this intrigue that I haven't had a chance to properly mourn Richard's death."
  
  "I know what you're going through," I said softly.
  
  "No, Nick, you don't," she said with feeling. "You can't know. Your job is all-important to you. Maybe that's best for all of us, everyone in the United States. But it's not what I need or want. I quit the intelligence community because of the problems. I love you — but I can't bear the thought that you'll be out there somewhere getting shot at all the time. I need the time to mourn and I doubt if I'll come back to you."
  
  "I said I understand, Marta, and I do. Really."
  
  "Really?" she asked, her eyes lifting to mine.
  
  I kissed her gently. She broke off, smiled at me, and then turned and ran. I watched her go, a hollowness inside me. What she did was for the best. I knew that, but it still hurt.
  
  I stood looking out over the desert, waiting for sunset. The orange and yellow clouds convinced me that there was other beauty in the world. My thoughts soon turned back to Las Vegas and my interrupted vacation. I walked off briskly, wanting to get back to the serious job of relaxing so I could forget my job — and Marta.
  
  
  
  
  
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