“Fine with me,” muttered Pierce.
“To set a trap,” the head of the Gap continued.
“Have you come for our blessing?” This question came from the shape.
“No. For your help.”
“You have the resources of an entire organization, an entire intelligence community, behind you.”
“They’re no match for McCracken. I want to draw him out, but once he surfaces I’ve got to be sure he can be taken.”
“Yet by your own admission…” The shape broke off his own words. “Yes, I see what you’re getting at.”
“They alone can stop McCracken and his Indian friend.”
Pierce got to his feet. “They? Are you suggesting we use the disciples against a pair of men!”
“The security of this operation may well depend on it,” Virginia Maxwell insisted.
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Think of the risk involved if we do this!”
“Think of the risk involved if we don’t.”
Pierce’s eyes fell proudly on the huge wall map dotted with red lights to denote the targeted nuclear power plants. “Our operation is less than two days from activation.”
“There may not be an operation if McCracken remains at large. I submit to you, gentlemen, that he disappeared in Brazil because Takahashi reached him before we could. That means he knows everything — and knowledge in the hands of a man like this is the most dangerous weapon of all. Don’t you see? If he met with Takahashi, he has the list! He knows our names, our identities, all of us. Even if our operation is successful, he will hunt us down.”
“He could not know the location of these bunkers,” the shape told her.
“He’ll find them. He’ll find us. It’s what he does. We’d be playing right into his hands.”
“You sound very certain of all this, Miss Maxwell.”
A sigh preceded Virginia Maxwell’s next words. “I’ve been in the intelligence game for over two decades now. The operatives I haven’t worked with I’ve read about, and McCracken stands apart from all of them. He’s not the best in any single facet of the game, but he’s the best by a long shot when you consider all of them together. Goddammit, he killed a disciple. He killed someone we made to be unkillable.”
“You’re sure he’ll go after you and not one of the others on the list?” asked the shape.
“Absolutely.”
“Why?”
“Because he knows I’m still available, and he’s already familiar with the logistics involved.”
“That being the case,” said Pierce, “it’s conceivable even the disciples won’t be able to help you.”
“Just give them to me and let me worry about the rest.”
“We’d be risking the entire operation if we did.”
“You’d be risking it even more if McCracken is left at large.”
The shadow projected behind the shape showed the semblance of a nod. “I want to hear your plan first, Miss Maxwell. If I approve of it, we’ll do as you say.”
The car was an ancient Yellow Cab pockmarked with rust. “Ain’t much, but she runs,” said Sal Belamo, slamming the driver’s door with a creak.
“Always nice to travel in style.”
“Good to see you, too, McCracken,” Belamo said, and scooted around to open the door for Patty. “Scuse my manners, but being red-flagged tends to stress me out. You ask me, I’d be better off taking up boxing again and hoping Carlos Monzon comes outta retirement to finish the job.”
After leaving Takahashi, Patty and Blaine had left Japan on a commercial airliner. No way, McCracken figured, could every flight coming into the country be watched. As a further precaution, on the chance the enemy knew of their brief stay in Japan, they changed planes at Heathrow and boarded a flight bound for Chicago. The last leg was a nonstop to Boston’s Logan Airport, where Sal Belamo was waiting. With the hours lost to plane changes and time zones, they arrived late in the morning on Thursday, forty-eight hours before the disciples would begin their deadly work.
“You get ahold of Johnny?” Blaine asked Sal.
“We’re on our way to pick him up now, boss. Things ain’t been great for him, either. Had a bad experience in Philadelphia, where one of the six killers got himself dead in a bad way.”
“Aren’t many good ones.”
“Even fewer worse than this. Somebody twisted his head like a bottle cap. Johnny said it was one of those Thunder whatevers.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Then check this out. Four of the other killers are toast, too, and the last one is probably floating in some river. That surprise ya?”
“Not in the least.”
Sal honked the horn in frustration. “When you plan on telling me what the fuck went down in Jap land?”
“After we pick up Johnny.”
Wareagle met them in a rest area just north of Boston, as planned. As soon as he got into the back of the cab, Blaine could feel something wasn’t right. He couldn’t explain exactly what; the big Indian simply felt, well, different. In all the years they had known each other, Johnny had been unflappably measured, existing on a keel so even it was maddening. But today an uneasy edge hung about him, something sharp and new.
“Hey,” Sal Belamo broke in as their stares held, “you ask me, this tub doesn’t make for our best route of travel south. Not exactly inconspicuous, if you get my drift.”
“We’ll find the nearest shopping center and make a change.”
“Big Lincoln if I can spot one?”
“Sounds good,” Blaine replied. “Give me a chance to tell you boys about our unscheduled trip to the Orient….”
“You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me,” Sal Belamo muttered after Blaine had finished detailing the incredible story of the Children of the Black Rain. “This goddamn albino hires six icemen to whack a bunch of people the Japs planted as babies?”
“All grown up now and holding the fate of this country in the balance.”
“Not them alone, though, is it? Shit, that we could handle. They got your Omicron legion in their corner, and that changes the odds.”
“In our favor, maybe.”
“You got an idea, chief?”
“The makings of one, anyway.”
“What comes next?”
“We ride south.”
“Washington?”
“Not quite.”
“I’m not afraid of you. I want you to know that.” Abraham looked up from the fire he was kneeling in front of in Virginia Maxwell’s study that night. The flames lent their color to his straw-colored hair and glistened off his ice-blue eyes.
“Nice of you to say so,” he replied.
“The others will be arriving at the rendezvous point shortly. You, of course, will be there. I leave it to you to brief them on what they will be facing tomorrow.”
“You’re that sure you can predict McCracken’s actions?”
“He has no choice,” Virginia Maxwell insisted. “This is the only course of action available to him, under the circumstances.”
“Yes,” Abraham said, with a smile Maxwell did not understand. He rose and stood there in front of the fireplace. “Is this the way you treat all your people?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You haven’t come within eight feet of me since I arrived, Ms. Maxwell. I had hoped our first meeting would have been more pleasant.”
“This is business.”
“Everything is business to me.” He shook his head as if disappointed. “I can understand it coming from the others, but I expected more from you.”
“We have a task before us and nothing more.”