And then, just as the craft completed its swiveling turn, another grappling line shot out from somewhere below them. The grapple slapped firmly onto one of the stubby wings, snapping taut as the mortar's takeup reel kicked in.
The patrol boat had far too much mass and engine power for such an attack to have much effect. But in the confined space where the pilot had settled his craft, in the middle of the roiling air currents created by the fire below it, a small nudge was all it took. The boat tipped slightly forward and to the side as the take-up reel yanked at its wing, its nose dipping as it lurched a couple of meters forward. There was a brief grinding noise as it slammed into the side of the building; and then, with a surge of engine power, it snapped the cable, fatally overcorrected, and slid sideways out of their view. A second later, with a horrible crunch of tearing metal, it crashed into the flaming street below.
"Let's go," Skyler shouted to the Phoenix people still standing frozen in place, most of them staring at the spot where the patrol boat had been. "Kanai?"
"Come on," Kanai said, grabbing one of the youths by the arm and pulling him bodily across the roof.
Hawking and Flynn started toward the others, but with Kanai's action the spell was apparently broken.
Skyler bringing up the rear, they made it to the stairs.
With their building having presumably been identified, Skyler had expected Security to make some lastditch attack to stop them. But apparently the disarray the blackcollars had sowed was too widespread for anything like quick action. They met no opposition on the stairs, and a few minutes later were in the alleyway behind the building, where a line of four cars was waiting.
"Into the cars," Skyler ordered them. Catching up with Dorfman he grabbed the boy's arm and steered him to the vehicle at the back of the line. "Come on, come on—get in," he called to the rest as he half guided, half pushed Dorfman into the back seat. "Hawking? Get them settled and then get back here—
you're driving this one."
"Give me a hand here, will you?" Hawking called back as he helped one of the others into the car. "This one's pretty woozy."
"On my way," Skyler called back. "Sit tight," he told Dorfman, closing the car door and running over to Hawking.
Dorfman was still sitting there, alone, when the other three cars roared off into the night.
Bailey had very much not wanted to be the last one to arrive at the conference room. Unfortunately, he was.
"Sit," Daasaa said quietly, indicating the far side of the table from where he and Halaak were seated.
"Yes, Your Eminence," Bailey said. Poirot and Ramirez, he noted sourly, had thoughtfully left the seat between them empty, thereby putting Bailey in the middle where he could bear the brunt of Ryqril attention. "My apologies for my tardiness."
Neither Ryq replied, but merely waited in silence until he had seated himself. "Now," Daasaa said, his eyes glittering. "Ex'lain."
Bailey took a careful breath. "They outsmarted us, Your Eminence," he said reluctantly. "I wish it were otherwise. But it's not."
"That is not su'icient," Halaak growled. "There is a traitor. Who?"
"No one betrayed the mission, Your Eminence," Bailey said. "At least, no one in this room."
"Yet they identi'ied the s'y yae 'lanted," Daasaa pointed out. "How did they dae that?"
"I don't know," Bailey admitted. "Something he said or did, I suppose, or maybe something about his appearance that gave him away."
Beside Bailey, Ramirez stirred. "It seems to me that we know one likely candidate for traitor, Your Eminence," he said. "General Poirot is the one—"
"I did not betray the mission," Poirot bit out angrily. "And let me remind you that of all of us in this room, I'm the one who's been under the most complete observation. How could I possibly have communicated anything to the blackcollars without half of Athena knowing about it?"
"There is reason to General 'Oirot's argunent," Daasaa agreed. "What o' yae, Lieutenant Ranirez?"
"I couldn't have had anything to do with this, Your Eminence," Ramirez said, his voice steady. "I didn't even know about Colonel Bailey's spy until after the blackcollars left him behind."
"Those rogue spotters claimed to be from your office," Poirot accused.
Ramirez glared at him— "They weren't rogue," Bailey put in before he could say anything. "That was why I was late, Your Eminences. I was getting the full transcript of the pilots' interrogation."
"Yae ha' it?" Daasaa demanded.
"Yes, Your Eminence," Bailey said, pulling a set of papers from his folder and handing it across the table.
For a few minutes Daasaa and Halaak poured over the report in silence. Bailey waited, listening to his thudding heart and wondering if Poirot and Ramirez were sweating as much as he was. He rather expected they were.
At last, Daasaa looked up. "There is no sign they rere traitors," he agreed grudgingly. " 'Ery rell. Let us exanine hor the 'lackcollars o'tained the s'otter 'ekencies." He looked at Poirot. "And General 'Oirot's authorization code."
"Actually, it wasn't General Poirot's personal code," Bailey said. "It was simply a general authorization which any of a thousand people would have access to, both here in Athena and in Boulder."
"And rich o' these thousand is the traitor?" Halaak demanded.
"I'm afraid we don't yet know," Bailey had to admit. "But we do know now that it was definitely Anne Silcox who was the one ordering them around. We've started an analysis on who in Athena or Boulder might have crossed paths with her in the past few months."
Daasaa made a strange sounding rumbling noise. "Dae yae know all o' Silcox's novenents in that 'eriod?"
Bailey winced. "No, Your Eminence, we don't."
"Then such analysis is unlikely to 'e 'ery usekhul, is it?"
"Probably not," Bailey conceded.
"Meanwhile, we also need to worry about what else this spy of theirs has told them," Ramirez said. "Isn't there some way to tell who else they've hit with this damned Whiplash?"
"We're still analyzing the tests we ran on General Poirot," Bailey said. "So far, we haven't found any detectable changes in his biochemistry."
"That's handy," Ramirez muttered.
"For someone," Bailey agreed grimly, looking back at the Ryqril. "And we can't just suspend or lock up all the possibilities, either—we don't have enough alternates to step into their places. Everyday operations would grind to a halt."
"I expect we're going to have to run everyone in the government through a second round of loyaltyconditioning,"
Poirot said. "Myself being first, of course," he added, looking at Ramirez.
"That rill not hel' us now," Halaak growled. "It rill take tae long."
"Actually, time may not be as short as we thought," Bailey said, bracing himself. Given the mood the Ryqril were in, there was no way to predict how they were going to react to this particular bit of news.
"It appears that our missing blackcollar did indeed come to Denver this morning."
The two Ryqril exchanged looks. "Yae are certain?" Daasaa asked.
"Yes," Bailey said, on solid ground for a change. "The various recordings clearly show all five blackcollars were present during the rescue, the four from Plinry and Kanai."
"Then he is not in Aegis," Halaak rumbled.
"Aegis?" Poirot echoed, turning startled eyes on Bailey.
"No, Your Eminence, he's not," Bailey confirmed, throwing a warning look at Poirot as he silently cursed Halaak's careless tongue. He'd worked very hard to make sure the fact that they knew about Aegis's back door stayed strictly between the three of them. Now, Poirot and Ramirez knew it, too.