I landed on the back of my neck, did a reverse flip and saw pretty lights of pink and yellow and red. I shook my head and pulled myself upright to find that, in reflex action, Hugo was in my hand and I was lashing out in short, vicious arcs. But I was slicing only thin air, and I heard the sound of a car engine starting up, a familiar sound.
Shaking my head to clear it further, I saw my blue Cougar starting up the dirt ramp. I ran around the edge of the crate and fell to the ground where Wilhelmina lay. I got one shot off at them, more in frustration than anything else, as they disappeared out the exit ramp. I heard the sound of the car receding, and I put the Luger back in its holster.
They were off and running, and Hawk had the cops out looking for a black Chevy. I decided to do the same and found their car behind a long generator. They'd left the keys in it. I drove it out of the construction site and down Norbert Road. A police helicopter appeared overhead and I waved at it. Minutes later I was surrounded by flashing yellow and red lights and a cordon of police cruisers. I climbed out, talked fast, and they let me contact Hawk via their radio. I straightened things out and gave them the new description of the blue Cougar.
"Hell, friend," one cop grimaced. "They could have taken off in any damn direction by now."
"Seek and ye shall find," I said. He gave me a disgusted look as he closed the door of his patrol car. I got back in the black Chevy and headed for the Carlsbad house. I'd go over every damn inch of it and see if it yielded anything. So far Rita Kenmore's idealistic, sincere, dedicated uncle, out to make the world listen, had been responsible for four deaths — the two guards at the Cumberland operation and now the two FBI agents. But that figured, too. I'd long since learned that there was nothing so calloused as the idealist who thinks he's got his hand on the true light. Nothing matters except his quest.
I was thinking about the girl as I approached the Carlsbad house, fairly certain she didn't know how deeply her uncle had dug himself in. Maybe she wouldn't really find out until it was too late. Or maybe she'd find out and look the other way.
I pulled up in front of the house and got out slowly. My body cried out in protest, every muscle of it. It made me remember that I not only had a deadly virus to find but a score to settle. The front door was open and I started with the girl's bedroom where I'd seen the open traveling bag on the bed. She'd obviously just tossed a few things into it because most of her clothes were still in the closet with a few pieces lying on the floor. I was about to leave the room when my eye caught a glitter of silver, and I reached down to pick up a small object, not unlike something from a locket or a key chain. A few links hung loosely from the circular piece of silver. Set into the metal was a piece of something that looked like either ivory or bone. Someone had torn it loose and dropped it in the haste to get Rita Kenmore's stuff together. I put it in my pocket and started through the rest of the house.
It revealed absolutely nothing until I reached a little room, hardly more than a cubbyhole, with a tiny, desk in it and a few shelves. On the shelves were large, fastened-together bundles of check stubs; in the desk drawer I found a checkbook of the three-hole business variety. As I pored over the check stubs, it suddenly became clear why Carlsbad had been living in this ramshackle old house.
His monthly pay was carefully entered each time and following the entry came a random assortment of checks in varying amounts all made out to an account in a bank in Hokkaido, Japan. Some of the stubs bore cryptic notes: payment; cars; food. Most of them bore no explanation whatever. But as I did a rapid count, I saw that over the past few years it had involved a helluva lot of money. To say he'd merely been salting it away was too simple an explanation. The whole thing smelled of preparation, funds sent to someone or someplace to be used for a certain event or time.
I'd just gathered all the stubs under my arm to take them and dump them in Hawk's lap when it happened. The whole goddamned house blew up under me. It's funny, when things like that happen, what you remember and note first I heard the roar of the explosion, like a volcano erupting, and I heard myself swearing as I was catapulted upwards and out of the little room.
"The bastards!" I yelled as I hit the side of the doorjamb and went sailing across the hallway. "They left a time bomb." I was conscious enough to recognize that one thing for a brief, flashing moment, and then the stairs rose up to meet me as I landed on them. There was a second explosion as the furnace blew. I felt my lungs closing down as the rush of turbulent, poisoned air hit me. I half-recall large chunks of plaster and wood descending on me and trying to cover my head with my arms, and then the blackness closed in on me as a sharp pain flashed through my head.
I came to, probably not more than a few minutes later, and my blurred eyes finally focused on a scene of wreckage and debris. But worse than that, as I lay there, my mind slowly orienting itself as to who I was and why I was lying amid all this rubble, I felt the hot air and saw the orange flaring of the flames. It was very hot, terribly hot, and as I pulled myself up to my hands and knees I saw that the place was a sheet of flame. I'd fallen down to the first floor as the second floor collapsed, which had saved my life. The roof was now the second floor with tongues of fire licking out through openings in the debris. I was surrounded by towering flames, which were working their way toward the middle of the rubble and me.
I tied my handkerchief around my face as I started to cough. It was a small, almost useless gesture, but seconds become terribly precious when life seems to be slipping away. A wind from somewhere, probably created by the vacuum of the fire itself, shot a long tongue of flame across the rubble directly at me. I scrambled backward and felt myself crashing through the shattered floorboards. I grabbed at them, caught one splintered edge for a moment and then it gave way, too. But it had held long enough to break my fall and I landed unhurt on the cellar floor.
The place was choking with smoke and dust from the exploded furnace, but I managed to glimpse light in a far corner. I climbed over twisted pipes and blocks of concrete toward it and felt a movement in the air. It was like the sight of water to a parched man and I pressed on, tearing my leg on a piece of jagged metal. It was suddenly before me, sunlight and air, still filled with the choking dust, but nonetheless air from a back cellar entrance, and I stumbled out into the open, still feeling the heat of the flames behind me. I fell down on the grass and lay there, gasping in great gobs of air as I heard the fire truck sirens approaching. I was getting to my feet with the handkerchief still hanging from my face when they rolled up to the front of the house, now nothing but a roaring tower of flames.
"There's nobody inside," I told the men, erasing the fear in their eyes. As they started to hose water on the inferno I climbed into the Chevy, torn and aching and bleeding from dozens of cuts and bruises and mad as all hell.
I stopped to phone Hawk from a roadside phone booth. He told me to go to my place, get feed up and then come to the office.
"I'll be here," he said. "I've had a cot brought in and I'm staying here until everything is over and done with, this World Leadership Conference and now this blasted business."
I hung up and drove slowly back to my apartment A long, hot bath followed by a long, cold martini did wonders for the body and the soul. It was just after dinner time when I reached Hawk's office at AXE headquarters. He was standing by the bay window, looking down on the circling lines of traffic below and he gestured to me as I entered. I went over to stand beside him, glancing at the deep, tired lines etched in his face.