The Dog moaned. Ray pulled him out from under the rubble and checked him over quickly.
"Goddamn," Ray said aloud. He'd accomplished his mission. He'd prevented the nuke from going off and he'd captured the Black Dog himself. "Goddamn," he repeated.
There was only one more thing he had to do.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
EPILOGUE
April Harvest sat behind her desk, reading the Washington Times and shaking her head. She couldn't understand how it had happened, but the Sharks had failed again. Obviously, there was some kind of cover-up going on; what she read in the paper just didn't make sense. There was, for example, this nonsense about the Trump also proving fatal to nats. Obvious blather, designed to make the Sharks look bad in the eyes of the world.
She closed the paper with a sigh.
At least she'd avoided detection. Perhaps Pan Rudo was still alive. There'd been no mention of him in the paper, but that was to be expected. He'd get in touch, probably, as soon as he could.
It was too bad she'd had to kill Johnson, but she couldn't risk him spilling everything to Ray. Ray ... He was a fool, but ...
Someone knocked sharply on her office door and she looked up.
"Come in."
"Hello, lover."
The blood washed out of her face like it'd been sucked away by a vacuum cleaner. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out as Ray sauntered into her office and perched jauntily on the edge of her desk. "Surprised to see me?"
"I - I - I - "
"I bet you are." He grinned his usual boyish grin. His normal face was back, looking, in fact, even better than when she'd first met him. He held himself a little stiffly, as if he still hurt somewhere, but then, as long as she'd known him, Billy Ray had hurt somewhere.
"How - "
Ray held up his hand, shaking his head. "We don't have much time and I've got some stuff I have to say." He sighed. "You are beautiful, you know, and I love you. I do. It's too bad you're such a murderous bitch."
Harvest didn't know what was more stunning, Ray's sudden appearance or his incredible confession. "Billy, I - "
"Stow it," Ray said. "I can forgive you for trying to kill me. What the hell, I'll bet a lot of people would like to have the guts to try it themselves. Maybe I can even forgive you for being a Shark and doing what you did to all those innocent people. I don't know. But my forgiveness is sort of beside the point. There's a lot of people you have to answer to, April. And you're going to."
She stood up. "What do you mean, Billy?"
"I stopped by Nephi's office before coming here. He was really surprised to see me, seeing as how you'd said I'd been killed at Rudo's lab and all. But he caught on quick when I told him the real story. He should be here any second to arrest you. I asked him for a minute or two with you so we could talk over some things."
Harvest's mind was in a whirl. She collapsed again in her desk chair. "If you love me - "
"What? I'd let you walk?" Ray shook his head. "I may not be very bright, but I'm not a chump. Not your chump, not anyone's."
They locked eyes for what seemed like a long time. Ray had left the door to her office open and both heard hurried footsteps coming down the hall.
"There's a gun in the desk drawer," Ray said. "You could go for it."
Harvest smiled. It was a cold, brittle smile that almost cracked but didn't. "As it turns out," she said, "you're too fast for me."
"Yeah. I guess I am."
Nephi Callendar stood at the door. He announced in a florid, dramatic voice, "Agent Harvest, I'm here to arrest you for murder, attempted murder, assault, conspiracy to commit murder - "
"She knows, Nehi," Ray said, without taking his eyes off her.
She stood. "I know," she said and held her hands up, wrists exposed and ready for the cuffs Ray had taken out of his pocket.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
He walked along the beach with the sunset sea breeze ruffling his tawny hair. He looked like any other surfer dude in Southern California, with his bare, muscular golden-tanned chest and faded dungarees, except perhaps for the combat boots crunching the wet sand.
He was Radical, and he was a free man. There were still federal warrants outstanding for Mark Meadows and his known aliases, which was to say, his "friends." But while the authorities might well have had certain questions as to why and how the notorious revolutionary ace, Radical had suddenly turned up, a quarter century after his sole known appearance at People's Park and looking not a day older, they had no grounds for asking them. Nor had they any way of linking him to the furtive Mark, not any inkling of such a connection.
So Radical could walk the SoCal beach as he pleased, without looking over his shoulder for the Feds. However interested in him they might have been, the authorities had to tread warily. Because, after all, he had saved the world.
He laughed aloud, startling some seagulls standing shin-deep in surf into complaining flight. "This old world is gonna see some changes made," he promised the birds, glowing pale orange in the sunset.
Approaching through the mauve gloom he saw two tail figures, one slim and female, one male and almost gaunt, with a brush of hair white as the gulls' wings. As they grew closer it was apparent that the man held himself rigidly upright against years whose weight was evident in the way he walked.
They stopped, facing each other a few feet apart: Radical on one side, Mark's father and daughter on the other. Sprout clung to her grandfather, who wore shorts and a Hawaiian shirt that would have been colorful in daylight. It seemed inappropriate to the military spareness of his frame. He was like some antique weapon, a Government Colt pistol or Mustang fighter, worn but still functional, possessed of nothing nonessential.
"Where's Mark?" General Meadows asked. His voice grated. Throat cancer, recently diagnosed, would likely kill him in a few months, though he was scheduled for surgery.
Looking into the old man's eyes, blue as the sky where he had spent his adult life, Radical touched fingertips to his sternum. "In here," he said.
The old man shook his head. "I don't understand any of this," he said. "Mark never talked to me about any of this ace business. I saw on the news that he could turn into other people, somehow. But I still don't understand." He looked down at the sand, looked up again. "The others went away in an hour," he said, more huskily than before. "Why are you still here instead of my son?"
Because I was the one who was always meant to be, I am strongest. I am Destiny. But somehow he could not say these things to this proud, erect, doomed old man.
"I don't know," he said, and that was truth too. "I don't know how to get Mark back. For now - " He spread his hands, "I'm the one who's here."
He turned to the girl, who had her arms around the old general and looked at Radical with huge eyes.
"Sprout," he said, holding out his arms, "Come give me a hug, honey."
She detached herself from her grandfather reluctantly, so that contact between them was broken like something physical, a twig or the surface of a bubble. She stared at Radical with huge uncertain eyes. The lights of a distant pier reflected in them in strange constellations.
"You're one of Daddy's friends?" she asked in a hesitant, little girl voice. Without waiting she flew to him, threw her arms around his neck, hugged him fiercely.
He took her in arms twice as strong as the strongest man's. "I'm your Daddy," he said, stroking her hair.
She burst into tears.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
On a cool, pleasant autumn day, the site of the mass grave that held the victims of the Black Trump was a pleasant place, high and quiet. Vineyards and bright green fields marched down the valleys. In the distance, the quiet purple hills of the Holy Land looked serene and peaceful.