“Their covers remain intact, Comrade,” Blücher said tightly.
“As of your last report,” Scharff countered acidly.
“As of my last report—Herr Oberst.”
Scharff glared at the man. He was building himself into a rage.
“Verflucht nochmal!” he shouted at him. “I demand results! Immediate results! Verstanden? Understood? The Minister is holding me personally responsible for the successful completion of this stinking affair.” He took a deep breath of outrage. “Me! You understand? And I will hold you responsible. Totally responsible. Is that understood?”
Tight-lipped, Blücher nodded.
“You have failed in everything,” Scharff lashed out at him. “Why has the pilot not been eliminated? Answer me. Why?”
“My original instructions, Comrade,” Blücher said testily, “from you yourself, were to avoid raising undue suspicion. To make certain the — elimination looked like an accident — or to dispose of the body without the risk of discovery.”
“To hell with instructions!” Scharff bellowed. He slammed his fist down on the doodle on his desk. “Eliminate him! Now! However it has to be done.”
Flat-eyed, Blücher looked at his angry superior. Flat-voiced, he said: “He is — with the woman.”
Scharff sat down. For a moment he fixed Blücher with a cold stare. He brought himself under control — back to his oily calm, so much more menacing than his rage. When he spoke, his voice was arctic.
“Then you will have to kill them both, will you not, my dear Major Blücher?”
Day Five
1
Hayden slammed the receiver back on the hook — a little harder than he'd intended. For a moment he stood glowering at the telephone. Shit! L.A. control was losing his cool. What the hell! Did he expect him to step out of the damned phone booth in blue tights with a fucking S on his chest?
Angrily he pulled the door open and left the booth. He stalked toward his buggy parked nearby in the ranch area. His mind analyzed the situation.
The mission was turning into a God-damned frostbite operation, he thought with disgust. In the God-damned heat of the desert, yet. He'd heard about that kind of fucked-up case. Whispered about back at the training center at Eberswalde. Operations that somehow got all screwed up — and began “cooling” their operatives. Like in a case of frostbite. First the least important ones went — the fingers, toes and ears. Then the more significant ones, the field controls, the hands and feet — and the essential limbs, until the head of the whole fucking mess succumbed. He had no illusions. If a frostbite operation was in the making, they'd give him the finger.
He's seen it coming, dammit. The constant changes in instructions. Getting more and more desperate. And now control had used the phrase “at any cost.” Shit! He knew damned well what that meant. He had become expendable.
Should he ankle it? Defect? Could he?
Perhaps. But not for long. He had no desire to be “umbrella-jabbed.” Like those Bulgarian turncoats a year or so ago. Those defectors who had broadcast attacks on the Communist regimes over Radio Free Europe, over the BBC and the West German station, Deutsche Welle. He wondered what KGB genius had come up with that little gem: injecting a tiny pellet of slow-acting but fatal poison with the jab of an umbrella tip or some other presumably harmless instrument. Sure was effective — both as a method of elimination that could be carried out on any up or down escalator, and as a deterrent against defection.
Those he knew about had been Bulgarians. Hell, it was too damned easy to read East German for Bulgarian. And the KGB didn't give a shit about literacy.
He reached his buggy, standing alone in the near-deserted parking area. He got in — and sat for a while. He was calming down. His best bet was to carry out his mission. Successfully. It was not impossible.
L.A. control had let another piece of information slip. His counterpart in Death Valley was on a flexible reporting schedule. He knew what that meant. The guy's cover was such that it would be impossible for him to report at specific times. It also meant that he was the primary operative on the mission. The head honcho. That made him, Jerry Hayden, the secondary one. He wondered idly who the man could be. A lot of “newcomers” had invaded the place in the last few days. New Rangers, Air Force people and, of course, a few tourists — no doubt in training for their expected hereafter. Could be anybody. As for him, Jerry Hayden, he'd better deliver or he'd be the first to turn black from frostbite while burning up in the fucking sun.
He started the buggy. It was beginning to run a little sluggish. He hoped the damned thing wouldn't conk out on him.
He looked at his watch. 0419 hours. It would be daylight soon. He had a couple of ideas how to come in out of the cold.
It was time he tried them out.
The monster was all around him — hard and shiny. He was surrounded by it. It was holding him tightly in its bowels. Its whining roar beat on his ears. And he was soaring in the sky toward the blinding disk that was his enemy…
But he was not afraid…
Other flying monsters were with him and they were not afraid either; but soon he was alone. Alone with the glaring ball in the sky. Suddenly it blazed up and rushed toward him. It let out a terrifying howl and hurtled down at him. His mind froze in fear. And the gleaming monster around him began to fall apart. A cacophony of grating, clanging, tearing sounds drowned out the monster's roar as chunks exploded from it and it disintegrated. He thrashed about in panic, held imprisoned…
Suddenly he was alone. Floating in nothing. Silence all around him. And above him hovered a huge white egg. And the terror left him…
The rocky ground came up to meet him and hit out at him in violent anger. The egg fell on him and enveloped him in white softness. It billowed around him. It covered him. It caressed him. It clung to him. It fastened itself to him and squeezed him until he could not breathe. And the terror returned…
He tried to scream his torment — but no sound came from his throat. He tried to reach out, but he could not move…
And he fell. Down. Down. Down into darkness — into something terrifying. Something unknown.
With a start and a sharp cry he woke up. He flailed his arms around him — but there was no enemy. Wild-eyed, snapping his head around, he stared at the walls of the kiln — dimly lit by the gray light of dawn. The huge white egg that had suffocated him was gone. The floor of the kiln was firm and whole. He knew it had not been so. He did not understand it. It made him uneasy.
He looked at Randi sitting against the wall, her legs drawn up, watching him with frightened eyes.
Had she brought his enemies upon him? He touched the wound on his head. It hurt. Perhaps she had made them go away.
Confused, disturbed by what had happened and unable to explain it, he crouched down on the sooty floor. He did not understand. Everything crowding in on him was frightening and not to be understood.
He sat quietly, watching the gray light outside slowly grow brighter…
The kilns stood on the road below, silent, massive, looking eerily anachronistic in the early light.
He stood observing them in silence. They might be there, he thought. If they had continued into the mountains in the direction they had been taking when they were last seen leaving the salt flats, this is where they might have ended up when darkness fell. If so, the kilns would have offered tempting shelter. One of them. Which one?