Runyan headed down the hallway. He heard a
noise, turned into the study, and was rooted with shock. A huge
fire roared in the fireplace. In disbelief, he watched Maria Latvin
pick up an object, squirt it with charcoal lighter, and toss it
into the fireplace where it ignited with a FOOMPF! and added to the
blaze. He looked more carefully and realized that the grate was
filled with burning books. The lab books!
“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted,
rushing toward her.
The woman swiveled quickly, the fingers of
her right hand deftly sweeping up a bone-handled knife as she
turned. I wish no one hurt, she thought, but I’m too close to let
this one stand in my way. I must get to Paul!
She faced Runyan in a half-crouch, the
position they had learned when planning the escape. She felt the
rush of irony that she should use this skill to fight her way back
in. She spread her feet wide, wielding the weapon in the classic
offensive position, point out, not down from her fist like a
dagger. Runyan registered her savage, determined look and the
wicked tip of the blade. He tried to brake, off balance.
The knife whipped in a deadly arc toward his
face. He jerked his head back and threw up his arms for protection,
stumbling backwards. He felt his jaw go numb as the blade went by
and then a deep agony flashed through his right forearm. He crashed
onto the floor. The woman’s knife hand had completed its vicious
cycle, instantly ready to strike again. Runyan’s fall on his back,
legs sprawled, had taken him just out of reach. He saw her look at
his exposed crotch and draw back the knife. Panic seized him. He
shuttled backward, crab-like, then flipped onto all fours. He
screamed as his right arm gave way, and he fell on his face. He
crawled awkwardly with one arm, flailing, splashing blood, then
finally got his feet under him and lurched out the door and down
the hallway.
Isaacs was on the front step when he heard
Runyan shout. He raced into the living room just as Runyan,
frightened and bloody, ran from the hall.
“Burning the lab books!” Runyan shouted
hoarsely, as he collapsed onto Isaacs who lowered him to the floor.
The two CIA agents pounded into the room. Danielson and the pilot
followed them, breathing hard, eyes wide.
“The woman! Get her!” Isaacs directed the
agents. “And watch out— she’s got some kind of weapon. Pat, see to
him, will you?” he said standing, pointing to Runyan’s sprawled
form. “You!” he said, fingering the pilot, “come with me.”
He raced down the hallway. At the end of it,
the two agents were putting their shoulders to a locked door.
Dimly, Isaacs heard the roaring start of a high performance
engine.
“A car!” he shouted. “Out the front way. See
if you can stop her! If she’s got Krone with her, for god’s sake
don’t do anything to harm him.”
Isaacs turned into the study as the agents
ran back down the hallway past him. He fought down a sense of
dismay at the sight of the hearth full of burning books, then
grabbed the fireplace tongs and began to frantically pull them from
the grate. The pilot backed into the room watching the two CIA
field men disappear into the living room. Then he turned and
stopped transfixed, watching as Isaacs threw book after burning
book about the room.
“Get your jacket off!” Isaacs shouted over
his shoulder. “Smother those!”
The carpet was starting to smoulder in a
dozen places. The young pilot stripped off his jacket and began to
extinguish the flames, covering the books with his jacket, kicking
them away from areas of smoking carpet.
Isaacs pulled the last book from the grate, a
half-consumed block of char. He removed his jacket and methodically
worked on the flames nearest him. After a frenetic minute, the last
of the flames died. Isaacs, breathing in huge gulps of air, smiled
gratefully at the young man. His proud grey-blue jacket was a
scorched tatter. He was covered with soot and his hands were red
with angry welts. Isaacs felt his own hands begin to puff and sting
with burns he had ignored.
“Sorry about your hands, and clothes.”
The young man shrugged.
“Would you make sure these are all out?”
Isaacs asked him. “I’ll check the others.”
Isaacs left the soldier gently kicking the
books into the hallway, checking for those still smouldering.
Pat Danielson had run over to Alex Runyan and
then stopped, weak-kneed. He lay on his back, staring pale faced at
the ceiling. His shirt was slashed just below his right elbow and a
dark stain spread into the cloth, but it was his neck that held her
attention. His beard below the chin line dripped red blood. She
paid no attention to the two CIA agents who tore through the room
and out the front door. My god, she thought, dropping to her knees,
his throat’s been slashed!
Runyan rolled his eyes to her and smiled
weakly. “I’ll never look at another woman again.”
Danielson forced herself to look at his neck.
With relief, she realized the wound was just along the jaw bone. It
was deep, with pink bone showing, but not life threatening.
“She—she nearly cut your throat.”
“I certainly got the impression that was her
goal,” Runyan croaked.
“Let me look for something to stop the
bleeding,” Danielson said. She ran through the dining room into the
kitchen. She slammed through the cabinets until she found a stack
of dish towels. She turned to go, then stopped and pulled open
drawers until she found a large, sharp kitchen knife. She trotted
back to Runyan who was struggling to sit up.
“Lie down, crazy,” she said, pushing him in
the chest with the butt of the knife.
Runyan spied the gleaming blade. “You’re
going to finish the job,” he groaned. “Make it quick.”
Danielson put the knife and towels down and
gave him a pained look. She rolled one of the towels up and aligned
it with the cut on his jaw.
“Hold that!” she said sternly, grabbing his
good left hand and putting it on the towel. She laid his right arm
slowly, gently, straight out from his body. Then she picked up the
knife and carefully inserted the tip in the hole in his shirt and
slit the gash to the end of the sleeve. She reversed the knife and
extended the slash to his upper arm so she could curl the cloth
away from the wound. It was also deep, with sliced tendons exposed,
bleeding steadily and profusely. She wrapped a towel around the
forearm and it promptly turned a bright crimson. She slit another
towel in several places with the knife and then tore it into
strips. She knotted two strips around the towel on the wound and
another just above the elbow as a tourniquet.
She felt Isaacs crouch at her side.
“How is he?”
“Not as bad as he looks, I thought his throat
was cut. He’s lost a lot of blood, though.”
“I’ll send the pilot in the van for his
chopper. There must be someplace he can set down around here. We’ll
get him down to the base hospital at Holloman as soon as
possible.”
Isaacs headed quickly for the door. Outside
the two agents were jogging back up the driveway.
“Missed her?” Isaacs inquired.
“No way,” one of them replied. “Damn Ferrari,
or some such thing. But she didn’t head for the lab; she took off
in the opposite direction. Shall we take the van after her?”
“No, we need it to help get medical attention
for Runyan. Was Krone in the car?”
“Didn’t get a good look, but yeah, I thought
I saw a passenger.”
“Can’t be too hard to find such a car in
these parts,” Isaacs observed.
“Nah,” the agent agreed, “it’s bright red and
goes two hundred miles an hour. Should be a snap from the air.
It’ll be dark soon, though. That could give her an edge.”
“Let’s get on it then,” Isaacs said. “You go
with the pilot to the lab. Radio from the helicopter for a search
team.”
“Right,” replied the agent, heading for the
van.
Inside the house, Runyan had closed his eyes.
Pat Danielson looked at his face, nearly as white from shock as the
plaster on the adobe walls. Slowly, she reached out and put a
comforting hand on the pale forehead.
“Damn you,” she whispered. “Damn you.”
*****
From his helicopter seat, Robert Isaacs
looked down on the lights of the Ellipse, the thrust of the
Washington Monument, and the illuminated sheen of the White House.
His exhaustion ran so deep that the sight barely stirred him. His
hands stung from burns and his belly ached from the cold, greasy,
hastily packed box lunch that he had grabbed from the commissary at
Holloman Air Force Base and shared with Pat Danielson on the flight
back to Andrews. With luck, he thought, the car would be depositing
Danielson at her apartment about now. He, on the other hand, had to
face the most important meeting of his career with scarcely the
energy to hold his head up. There would be shock, a lot of heat, a
search for scapegoats. He knew he would be a target if his
collusion with the Russians were revealed.
He hoped he didn’t look as bad as he felt.
The clean jacket that an aide had picked up from his home and
delivered to Andrews helped, but he could see singe marks where the
shirt cuffs showed. He looked at his watch as the helicopter
settled onto the pad on the White House lawn. 11:37. A helluva time
to decide the fate of the nation. He thought he might prefer to
change places with Runyan, trussed up in a hospital bed, or the two
agents who had gone chasing a Ferrari through the mountains of New
Mexico. Isaacs wondered whether they had gotten anything to eat. He
steeled himself as the door swung open and climbed down into the
rotor’s wash. He supervised the unloading of the precious
foot-locker, keeping one of the lab books to show the President and
then headed for the nearest door of the White House.
Inside, a White House guard escorted him to
the cabinet room. Isaacs thanked the guard, opened the door and
stepped inside. Seventeen people were seated around the large table
that filled the room. Isaacs nodded to the Vice-President, several
cabinet officers, the Chairman of the National Security Council,
and various others he knew. He recalled that the Secretary of
Defense, smart enough to beat the August heat in the capital, was
absent on a tour of European defense installations. Some of the
faces displayed excitement at the state of emergency, others, blase
and disgruntled at the lateness of the hour, glanced at him long
enough to ascertain that he was not The Man and returned to
desultory conversations. The President’s chair, halfway along the
table, its back to the window, was still empty.
Howard Drefke rose from his seat at the far
end of the table in front of the unlit fireplace. Wayne Phillips,
who had been seated next to him, also stood as Isaacs walked the
length of the room to join them.
“Bob. How are you?” Drefke’s voice was low in
the hush of the room, but warm.
“I’m fine.” Isaacs grimaced slightly at the
pain of the handshake, but offered his hand as well to Phillips.
They sat down, Isaacs taking a spare chair next to Phillips. He
placed the scorched lab book carefully on the table. “Sorry to call
you back here so suddenly,” Isaacs said to the physicist.
“No problem at all. I’m so happy to be of
service.”
“You brought the slides from Gantt?”
“Yes, they’re in the machine.”
Phillips gestured at a projector sitting on
the waist high table next to Drefke in front of the fireplace.
Isaacs checked the alignment of the screen at the other end of the
room, next to the door through which he had entered. He confirmed
that Drefke had brought the satellite photos. All seemed in
place.
“I caught one of those commuter flights from
La Jolla to Burbank just after you called this morning,” Phillips
continued, “and Ellison was ferried over from Arizona. We had
several hours in Pasadena to assemble the data and make the slides
before my flight east. I’m sorry that Ellison isn’t here to help
with the presentation, especially since poor Alex is hurt. His
condition is not too serious, they tell me?”
“No, he lost some blood, and he’ll be in a
bit of pain for awhile, but he’ll be fine. In any case, you’re the
head of Jason, the man the President will want to hear from.”
The door banged open and the President barged
through. Isaacs immediately perceived that the individual normally
so bluff and hearty on television press conferences was thoroughly
steamed. He strode to his chair and sat down so quickly that no one
had a chance to stand. There was a momentary bobbing of bodies as
several of the people started to rise, thought better of it, and
resettled themselves. The President had a piece of paper partially
crushed in his tight grip. He slammed it on the table.
“The goddamned Russians have gone berserk!
This is the third hot line message from them today. This morning
they wiped out the nuclear device that was our protection against
their laser. All afternoon they’ve been methodically picking off
pieces of space junk, showing what they can do. There are rumors in
every major capital that our surveillance system is compromised and
that one side or the other is on the verge of a preemptive
strike.”
He poked a rigid finger at the paper.
“If we so much as blink we’ll be at war and
our NATO allies are panicked to the point where any one of them
could push the wrong button.”
He looked around the table. “The Russians are
mad, and they are scared, and they are blaming us. I want to know
what the hell is going on!”
The President paused and forcibly composed
himself. He continued with a quieter but still strained tone. “They
seem to think that we have developed and are testing some fantastic
new kind of weapon that can be fired through the Earth.”
He turned toward the Director of Central
Intelligence at his far right. “Howard, you indicated you could
shed some light on this. I hope you don’t mind sharing one or two
of your secrets with me before the whole world goes up in a
goddamned nuclear war!”