Copyright © 2005 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.

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Intersect: Danger

a novel

by John T. Cullen

35.

Montana, 1945

Tim was at work not long after his reunion with the women, when he looked up from his desk and saw a familiar looking woman from his past, across the courtyard in the next wing of his office building.

Shocked, he dropped the pencil he was holding and half-rose. The woman stood talking to a young female yeoman as if asking directions. The yeoman, a plump brunette wearing white blouse and dark skirt, explained something and pointed away down a corridor in the direction of the central plan archives, the rooms upon rooms crowded with files and shoebox-like receptacles filled with engineering drawings. Some of the archives were those of Tim’s section, which were top secret and sensitive. The woman strode off in the direction the yeoman had indicated.

Tim hurried out the door after her.

The woman was Anna Stokowska, and she was wearing the uniform of a U.S. Marine Corps Women’s Reserve captain. Even from a distance of 200 feet, through two windows, Tim had made out the flash of twin silver bars on each shoulder, on the field green with red trim of her Class A uniform. How could that be, when she’d just reintroduced herself to him a few weeks earlier as a Navy nurse?

Something was seriously wrong here. He hurried down the echoing corridors, where passing men whistled tunelessly and the echoes of their whistling rose up through wrought-iron railings and wooden stairwells where clusters of Navy personnel hustled about at their jobs. Tim made his way through the central lobby of the third floor and spotted Anna’s shapely behind moving along a busy causeway over the street below, a connecting tunnel leading to the files warehouse on the other side.

What to do? He bent surreptitiously over a wall fountain, still eyeing her. He let the water run, but did not drink. When she was far enough away not to notice, he trailed her. She showed a wallet badge at the information desk, and two young female clerks unsuspectingly directed her to where the research documents of Admiral Lemney’s section were stored. Tim wished he were a fly so he could hover just over her shoulder and see where she was going, what she was after.

The opportunity presented itself in the form of Stan Kehoe, who was just marching past, carrying a sheaf of documents under one arm, and a cup of coffee in his other hand. As ever, he looked boyish and busy and sincere and utterly silly. “Stan!” Tim shook the other's shoulders.

“Whoa! My coffee!”

“Stan, this is really important.” In about two minutes, he explained the gist of it to Stan, who handed over the sheaf of papers and agreed to go back and kind of loosely keep an eye on Anna.

Tim returned to his office, closed the door, and sat back to think. What had she said? Navy nurse...he got on the phone and dialed the hospital. “Hello, is there a nurse by the name of Lieutenant Anna Stokowska?”

“Spell that please,” said the yeoman at the security reception desk. Tim did, and the answer came back in a moment: “Yessir, Lieutenant Stokowska is assigned to the Ob-Gyn Ward, but she is off-shift right now.”

“I’ll take her ward number so I can call direct.”

“That’s against rules, Sir. Nurses are not allowed to receive calls on the floor. You’ll have to go through the Head Nurse’s office.”

“Okay, fine, I’ll call back later.”

“I’ll be happy to connect—“

“Thanks, I have a baby coming out, no time now.” He hung up.

Jeez. What next?

As he sat holding his head, Stan burst in. “Hey, got my papers?”

“Over there.” Tim pointed to the sheaf of drawings he’d placed on a chair near the door. “What was she after?”

Stan shook his head. “She wasn’t. She walked right through the place heading for the next connector. I thought she was going to the ladies’ room and kind of hung back, and then I saw her behind on the ramp, sashaying along, so I ran after her.”

“She didn’t see you.” Tim spoke with a falling voice.

“No way. She was on a mission, that woman. On her way to a section in the next building that I wasn’t allowed to get into but she showed some I.D. and waltzed right in.”

“What section?”

“Records from the Radiation Lab at Berkeley. Whatever that means.”

“Thanks.”

Stan left, and Tim ruminated. He was in a bit of a different position now than he’d been in London. It had the ring of the same kind of stuff. How to check up on her without giving himself away? He strode down the hallway, knocked on Cdr. Martin Teague’s door.

“Yeah.”

He let himself in. “Martin, can we talk?”

“What trouble are you in now?” Teague sat behind an ocean of ledgers, puffing on his pipe like an oceangoing tug. He looked harried.

“Sorry, Martin. It’s important.” He explained briefly about Anna. “I think we should put a tail on her, find out what we can.”

“I agree,” Martin said, reaching for his phone.

Tim put his hand over Martin’s. “Just remember—we don’t know who is listening to whom, so don’t say more than you need to.”

Teague looked put-off. “What are you, the FBI?” But he looked up the number and called an ONI connection. “Hello, Sam? Marty Teague here. Got a kind of an odd little thing I think you’ll want to check out for us. Can’t talk on the phone.” Moments later, when he hung up, he said: “The run-around. What else do we expect? And he’s a friend of mine! Imagine if I were a stranger—where would he refer me then?” He wrote down a name and an address and pushed the slip of paper across to Tim. “Fellow’s name is George Shipp. He’s a major in Army CIC. They manage the Berkeley side of the archive. He’ll talk to you. Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Tim pocketed the information and went back to his office, just long enough to grab his hat, leave a note with his secretary that he was going on a medical appointment and wasn’t leaving a number where he could be reached—Teague would field for him. With that, he set out to find the address on Grace Street.

Major George Shipp was a handsome, mustached man with dark hair and sharp eyes. He had a crisp, cuttingly humorous manner and the attitude of a jock that is temporarily stuck in a working uniform in an office but would rather be out playing sports. He had a tan, and on his wall were tennis rackets, while in the corner stood golf clubs, softball equipment, and a furled green volleyball net. As they shook hands in the doorway, Shipp said: “Yeah, I’m the sports coordinator for just about any office, Army or Navy, within a mile of here. Come in and grab a seat. Coffee?”

“Yeah, thanks. Black, one sugar.”

Looking crisp in his neatly ironed shirt and freshly pressed tie, Shipp stood at the corner sink and set up cups while waiting for the kettle to boil. “Old hotel,” he said. “Slated for demolition, but the Army decided it would serve until after the war.”

“Great location,” Tim said. It was an unexpected hidden spots of bureaucratic devastation, in the midst of an upscale neighborhood near Grace Cathedral and Huntington Park. One could smell tropical plants in the gardens in the park and hear macaws yelling their beaks off. Occasionally, one heard the thump of a tennis ball on packed clay not far away on the courts near the Pacific Union Club.

Shipp said: “So what’s going on, Nordhall?”

Tim told him about Anna.

“Oh...” Shipp said, picking up a phone. He spoke briefly with someone and hung up. “This could be interesting.”

The kettle whistled and Shipp brought their coffees to the desk, where Tim sat waiting. The door opened, and two men in civilian clothes entered. One had gray hair and wore glasses. The younger one seemed the more authoritative and carried a thick brown file folder tied with string. Both wore flannel suits, and the older one shook out a cigarette, offering all around, but nobody else lit up. Shipp introduced them. “Major Pash,” he introduced the younger man, “and Colonel Reventloe. Both are with intelligence branches we don’t need to talk about just now.”

Pash said: “Lieutenant Commander Nordhall, have you had any dealings whatsoever with Rad Lab?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been to Berkeley?”

“Nope.”

Pash untied the string on his folder and opened it up. From Tim’s perspective, it contained a predictable set of documents, photos, memos. “I have access to a mile and a half of folders like this, but I picked this one on the fly because it pertains to your duty section. Interestingly, there is a small packet in here on you.”

“Doesn’t really surprise me,” Tim said.

Pash frowned. “You came here highly recommended, top reviews, blah blah, from your boss, Captain Jack Stone, who is now happily retired and living in San Diego. Silver Star, all kinds of hash on your chest, action off West Africa, blah blah. What did you do in Katanga, Nordhall?”

Tim sipped his coffee and tried his best to be helpful. “I had escaped from slave traders and made my way to the nearest friendly station to get back to my unit.”

“About 2500 miles. Sure, well it’s Africa, so what do I know. Great. You’re in Katanga, and you sell your soul to this fellow Crane, who is with O.S.S. Is that right?”

“Sounds sort of correct, except I think I still have my soul with me.”

“Right. Did Crane give you a talk about anything—say, minerals, rocks, that sort of thing?”

“Well it’s a couple of years ago now, but he did briefly talk to me about the importance of...” Tim had to think for a few moments, it had been so long. “Uranium, I think it was. One of those heavy metals, rare earths, whatever they are.”

“Yes. Tell me all that you remember.”

“That’s about all. Oh, a bomb. He said it had something to do with explosives. In fact we sat in a plane and he drew diagrams of how neutrons bounce around...” Tim had to stop and think again. “Critical mass. That was it. Well, it’s the stuff you read about in Scientific American, for the few people that do. I'm an engineer, so that sort of thing interests me.”

Pash nodded. “Very good. So there is a heavily censored segment here that I have no way of reading, that pertains to your services in London.” He closed the file. “Tim, let me put it this way. I have a need to know and a clearance longer than from here to the moon. I need to know every breath you took, everyone you fucked, everything you ate, and the color of every shit you took, from the time you left Africa until the time you followed that Stokowska broad down the hall this morning.”

Tim took a deep breath and exhaled. “Sounds like a long conversation.”

“An important one,” Pash said. “You need to understand, Tim, that I have access to the top levels of military and civilian government right up to the White House. This is that important, okay?”

“Understood.”

“Okay, I already know about Stokowska. I know you were popping her in London. No problem. She was probably popping you too, and you didn’t know it.”

“Colonel,” Tim said testily, “let’s make a deal. Don’t talk to me like I’m an asshole, and I won’t talk to you like you are an asshole. It will make things all that much smoother.”

Pash was a hard man, but he seemed amused. “Okay. Point well taken. I’m sorry.” He turned to Reventloe. “I’ll take that smoke, Carl. Looks like it’s going to be a long afternoon.”

Pash and Reventloe questioned Tim for nearly three hours.

Together, they relived Tim’s military career from the time he set out on H.M.S. Sturmer to the present. The only detail Tim avoided was his relationship with Meg and Corie. Nobody would believe him anyway, so he told as close to the truth he could: he’d met and befriended Corie, then fallen for her roommate while remaining friends with Corie; and now he was just a friend to both women. Even at that, Pash and Reventloe exchanged prurient looks but did not pursue that leg of their questioning any further. Tim was too relieved to be offended by their suspicions.

“Okay,” Pash said, “I think we have a good framework to run with. We’re not professional spies. We’re security people guarding a national secret to which you are obviously privy, thanks to our friend in Katanga. I checked and found out that he was killed in a plane crash not long after you last met him in London.”

“Crane?”

“The same.”

“No kidding.” Tim was always upset to hear of the death of someone he’d known.

“We have reason to believe his death was faked and that he’s still kicking around.” Pash looked up, seeking a reaction in Tim’s face. Seeing only surprise, he changed tracks ever so slightly. “Does the name Bentley mean anything to you?”

“British luxury car.”

Pash and Reventloe exchanged glances and smiled. “Right.”

Reventloe produced a pipe, which he tapped on his leg to empty it of old tobacco. “Do you read much economics?”

Tim shook his head.

“Professor White? Harry Dexter White? Name ring a bell?” Tim shook his head. Reventloe reflectively shook his head in the momentum of the questioning and began filling his pipe.

“Silvermaster,” Pash said. Tim shook his head, and the momentum of questioning went back to Reventloe. As the hours progressed, Tim noticed a pattern. Both men were working together, but Pash seemed more interested in matters involving the newly forming United Nations, while Reventloe kept circling carefully (without giving much away) around scientific matters. Atomic physics was mentioned a few times.

“Have you ever been to Canada?” Reventloe asked. “Montreal?”

“No.”

“But you’re from New England,” Pash injected.

“Yes.”

“New Haven. Yale University.”

“Yes.”

“Ever do any work there?”

Tim laughed. “No, just a humble local clockmaker.”

They laughed too. “Great. That’s funny,” Reventloe said with some remote, veiled unpleasantness in his voice, which Tim couldn’t decipher, except he knew they wouldn’t tell him anything more than they wanted him to know in order to extract information from him. Meanwhile, no doubt, the phony woman Marine Corps Reserve officer was probably walking off with the nation’s secrets.

Reventloe puffed on his pipe. “Ever hear of Amtorg?”

Tim shook his head.

“Chemator Inc.?”

“Joe Weinberg? Gregory Kheifitz?”

“No, no, no.” Tim was beginning to get funny tingles about his conversations with Crane in Katanga, and he said so. The conversation spun through a number of names that Tim wasn’t familiar with. Reventloe was interested in Tim’s nodding acquaintance with nuclear physics and tried to pin him down on something, but couldn’t. Tim knew he was clean, and didn’t worry. Pash brought the conversation back to Ivor Crane. “We suspect, but we don’t have proof, that Crane was working for the Soviets. I think it will be a few years yet before this country realizes how thoroughly those bastards have infiltrated every nook and cranny of our government, our military, industry, you name it.”

Reventloe added: “Sounds paranoid, but you have to remember the Communists have been losing the industrial battle from the very start, even though for a brief moment in the early Depression American workers were so desperate thousands migrated to the U.S.S.R. for work. The Reds have had to beg, borrow, and steal to keep up with us. Then Hitler comes along and together with Stalin murders a quarter of the Russian nation. They are going to be like cornered animals for the rest of the century, trying to prove the fantasy their dictatorship is better than a liberal free market system.”

Tim had had enough coffee to last him a week. “I bailed out of the spy business back in London last year. I hope you can read that in my records. All I wanted to do was tell you to keep an eye on my ex-girlfriend.”

“We will, Tim, we will,” Pash said darkly. “Thanks.” He rose and extended a hand. “We’ll be in touch if we need to talk more.”

“Go easy on Anna,” Tim said. “She is a good nurse and she helped a lot of people. I don’t know how she would have wound up working with that crowd.” At the same time, he was beginning to run some movies in his head, and they weren’t pleasant. He pictured her again that night in London when he was chasing someone, maybe Jaguar; more recently, her attempt to get close to him before his reunion with Corie and Meg; and now her apparition in the records office.

The two security officers regarded him with patience and pity.

On the way out, Tim stopped to say goodbye to George Shipp, who was in a front office having a soda and popcorn, and practicing making baskets in a waste paper basket with wads of waste paper. “You done in there?”

“Yeah,” Tim said. “Quite a show.”

“I listened in on part of it.” Shipp pointed to an intercom. “I already have two people tracking Anna Stokowska’s every move.”

“Go easy on her.”

Shipp rose and dusted himself off. “Nordhall, people like her cost lives. Sometimes lots of lives.”

“I know.” Tim felt sad. “It won’t help our cause to act like the Germans or the Japs or the Russians.”

“Philosopher, eh?” Shipp modulated his sarcasm a bit. “I’ll see what we can do, short of putting her in front of a firing squad.”

When Tim got home to the Hotel Auger, Meg was beside herself. “Tim, I’m afraid for Corie.”

“What do you mean?”

Meg pulled him in and slammed the door. She stood in the small kitchen wringing her hands. “I have to tell you this. I know you won’t like it, but the Bulgarian...he...doesn’t know I understand Russian. He was on the phone all excited, talking with his people. He’s here to help spy on us and the U.N., but he was just pulled off on a more important case. Something about a Bullet. Do you know anything about that?”

Tim took her wrists. “What about this bullet?”

She shook her head. “He knows Corie. He knows where she flies to sometimes. He mentioned her name.”

“Yes, and?”

Meg held her hands over her mouth and looked pale. “He grabbed his coat and ran out the door. Something about a bomb. What did he mean? Do you know? Are they going to blow up the U.N. or something?”

Tim held her away from him to quiet her while he tried to think. “A bomb...a trigger...no, it’s not the U.N. Something Crane once told me...”

“Yes?” She tried to follow him.

He put his hand on the door, and held the other hand up to stop her. “This is going to get really dangerous. Stay here and don’t go out, okay?”

With that, he hurried out into the hall and down the back stairs. Emerging in the courtyard, he sprinted into the street and to the nearest pay phone. Pash had set Shipp up as his contact. He dialed Shipp’s office.

“Shipp, it’s Tim Nordhall. I have to talk to you right away. This could be really important.”

“Really. We’re having trouble finding Anna Stokowska. Any idea where she might be?”

“Not an iota. Can someone pick me up? I need to talk with you.”

Shipp himself pulled up, driving a new 1945 Ford.

He wore a dark civilian suit, gray felt hat, and long grayish-tan overcoat. Tim stepped off the curb, pulled the door open, and got in. Immediately Shipp had the car in gear and moving with traffic. Someone honked behind him and he waved a finger in the mirror. “What is it now, Nordhall?”

“This is really important, okay? I have a friend who overheard a conversation.”

“The Varkidjian broad?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“We had her under surveillance and a higher branch of M.I. pulled us off it. Are you part of their network?”

“Oh no.” Tim waved both arms. “Listen, bub, I’m almost a civilian. I get out in less than a year and I think I’m gonna go home and build clocks in New Haven for a while.”

“Okay, skip the drivel. What is it?”

“I have reason to believe there is a gadget on its way here. Something important connected with the work Pash is doing. There is doing to be an attempt to steal it.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Putting two and two together from what was said. Meg overheard this Bulgarian say he was being pulled off his U.N. work, which we have to assume is very important. He ran out the door in a flash...so what would you assume?”

Shipp nodded, pursing his lips in thought while absently flowing with traffic outside the hermetically sealed and quiet windows. “He’s got a new assignment. I’ll tell Pash.” He reached under the dashboard, pulled out a dully finished green metal box, and put it on the seat. The box had an articulated cable running under the dash. He opened the box, took out a black phone, dialed, and listened. “Pash, it’s Shipp. I have Nordhall here in my car. He’s babbling something about an ombbay, got that? Something about a riggertay. That make any sense to you?”

Shipp glanced at Tim several times while continuing absently to negotiate corners, until they were driving along Market going in a big circle back toward Nob Hill.

Shipp hung up and put the box on the floor out of the way. “Pash couldn’t say much, but it’s over my head. We’re just muscle when you get right down to it. I’m sure you know more than I do.”

Tim raised both hands and implored: “My friend Corie is a pilot, and Meg thinks she may be involved somehow. I’m worried for her.”

Shipp didn’t soften. “You’re playing games with me, pal.”

“Honest, I’m not.”

“The U.S. Army is on the case, okay? Go back and take your girlfriend out for a milkshake or better yet, a bottle of scotch, and forget it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I have a softball game. Army-Marines. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Tim slapped himself on the head with both hands. “I can’t believe this!”

Shipp pulled up near where he’d picked Tim up. “Thanks for the enthusiasm and patriotism. Now outta my car. I have important stuff to do.”

“Jeez.”

“Bye.”

Tim was halfway in the street, and an angry motorist honked behind them. Tim stepped out of the way and slammed the door shut, even as Shipp accelerated. The honker drove by waving his fist, and angry older man with a little white mustache and yellow teeth and blazing eyes. Tim gave him the finger as he sped past accelerating in a screech of rubber.

Tim went to a pay phone and called Meg. The phone had to be tapped, no question about it. Had to be the good guys, though—so maybe they’d become interested this way. No time to think.

“Yes?” Meg answered in a scared voice.

“Honey, it’s Tim. Where do you think Corie is?”

“I don’t know, Tim. There are a dozen airfields around San Francisco and Oakland for starters. I have absolutely no idea.”

He thought, desperately, and couldn’t come up with anything. “All right. I’ll call you if I get any ideas. Keep an eye out for her.”

With that, Tim stood helplessly on the street corner.

Then he thought of Anna Stokowska. He had her phone number in his pocket. He went back to the pay phone and called—no luck. Damn! He smashed the receiver on the hook and paced up and down. What to do? Desperately, he called the hospital again, and asked for the Head Nurse’s office. An older woman answered.

“This is Doctor Shilfmx,” Tim said running his fingers over his mouth.

“Doctor who, Sir?”

“Shilfmx, Thostedorx Falx.”

“I’m sorry—“

“I need to get in touch with Army Nurse Captain Stokowska.”

“Oh,” the woman said with a growing tenor of conspiracy and vicarious delight, “Doctor Hershbein, I didn’t recognize your voice.”

“I’m eating a sandwich.”

“Of course. Anna did leave a number in case you called.”

“Let me have it, thanks.”

The woman dictated S-U-tter 1231.

“What part of town is that prefix?”

“Civic Auditorium, Sir.”

“Thanks.”

Tim put in another coin and dialed the number. The phone rang and rang, but nobody answered. He dialed the Operator and asked for an address to go with the number. The Operator sounded grumpy. “I don’t have a listing that way, Sir. Oh, okay, I’ll skim through my directory real quick...here it is...” She gave him a street address in the downtown area and Tim took the first cable car down that he saw.

An hour later, he walked up the stairs and knocked on the front door of a quiet, dark town house. It was a dark green, glossy door with shiny brass lion’s head knocker, looking well maintained.

Nobody answered. After knocking unsuccessfully for several minutes, Tim stepped back down to the curb. He looked around, spotting a phone under a shade tree, and walked over to call Meg. He barely noticed the stately street with its fine fronts and well-kept sidewalks.

“Meg?”

“Yes?”

“Any word?”

“No. I’m worried sick.”

“Aw, Jeez.”

“Where are you?”

“Downtown. Looking for someone who may have information.” As he spoke, he spotted Anna Stokowska down the street. She came toward him on the opposite side of the street, without noticing him, and looking very preoccupied. Her face was pale, and her eyes were large dark caverns. She wore a long overcoat, and carried a heavy shopping bag. She had a kerchief over her head. It made her look like an old woman, but Tim recognized her.

“Call you back soon,” he told Meg and hung up.

He was about to cross the street and call out to her, when he noticed a man walking the other way toward her. Something made Tim and stop and pull back into the shade of the willow on the sidewalk. It took him a minute but he recognized the stiff hand first, then the face. Ivor Crane, the suave older O.S.S. officer he’d last seen in London.

Anna hurried up the stairs to the green door fumbling with her key. Crane strode along, with his hands in the pockets of his black suit. Tim remembered Crane’s prosthesis, which looked almost normal thus pocketed. He walked right up the steps behind Anna and put his good hand on her back. For a moment, Tim wanted to run to her rescue. Then he realized that she was greeting Crane with open arms and a relieved look. She embraced him with both arms and pressed her cheek against his chest. He seemed to be comforting her. She unlocked the door, and they stepped inside. Anna might think Crane was on her side, but for Tim the pieces suddenly clicked into place. Crane might be old school and big money, but Crane was on the wrong side. Even as the door closed, Tim was on the phone. He dropped his remaining coin in, before he realized that Shipp was probably gone already. He dialed the number, but nobody answered. Gone home for the day. Fine way to run an intelligence operation. He’d furnish Shipp the address of this place, and the FBI could get a toe-hold on tracking this nest of spies.

Meanwhile, what to do right now? He was almost out of money. He had no coins for more phone calls. It was too risky to leave to get help. He walked back up the street, his heart pounding. He was about to do something that could get him arrested, but he had no choice. Looking furtively around, he tried door handles on cars, until he came to one that was unlocked. Looking around, he pulled the door open, got in, and bent down to pull the ignition wires out of their harness. It was something he’d seen done before, when a fellow engineer had forgotten his key and was too drunk to think straight. Easy as pie—he touched the two wires together that would normally go into the ignition. The car started with a powerful roar of eight cylinders, and Tim wheeled away down the empty street. Nobody came running out onto the sidewalk, so for the moment he’d get away with this.

Tim waited in the shadows of house doors across the street, half a block away. He did not have long to stand there.

The green door opened, and out came Crane, bounding down the steps while Anna stood anxiously waiting with folded arms as if she were cold. Reluctantly, as if letting go, she pushed the door shut.

Crane trotted up the street. A minute later, when Crane pulled out in a dark blue 1940 Oldsmobile, Tim followed at a discreet distance.

It was getting late in the day. A few cars already had their lights on. Crane drove steadily and fast, heading out of town. Tim followed, and the city gave way to countryside. Luckily, the gas tank was three quarters full. Telephone poles flashed by with monotonous regularity. Crane drove on, and Tim was beginning to wonder if he were being led on a wild goose chase. Abruptly, Crane signaled to pull over, and Tim had just time to snap out of his reverie and do the same. Without signaling, Tim pulled right into a country driveway between wire fencing. It was a rutted dirt road with grass growing down the middle. Off to the side were pastures and farm equipment. Tim did a quick, bouncing u-turn with his lights off and glided quietly to a halt at the edge of the road.

Three dark cars sailed by and parked in tandem behind Crane’s car. Crane walked back to consult with the drivers of the other cars. Then Crane got back into the Olds and resumed his trek. Now four cars headed east, with Tim following.

As the late sun lay on the horizon in the west, it became apparent what the destination was. With the window open, Tim heard loud buzzing sounds and looked out to see several military cargo planes taking off or landing. A sign confirmed that they were approaching an airfield: Livermore Naval Air Station. At a nearby intersection, the street signs read East Avenue and Greenville Road.

While Tim was staring at the street signs, he almost missed the sudden turns made by the cars. All four cars drove past the airport a short distance and turned around. Tim had to turn to avoid being noticed, so he turned left into the airfield itself.

He followed a wide service road around the field. At the southern end were the control tower and other structures, and north of them a broad square with planes parked at the ends. As he watched, a silvery cargo plane droned in from the east. It was a Douglas C-47 Skytrain, the military version of the advanced DC-3. The Skytrain flew downward to a landing with its flashing lights rotating on top and underneath. Could this be what Crane and his cohorts were waiting for? Tim had nothing to lose. He desperately wanted to do something, anything—find Corie, make sure she was safe.

As the plane taxied down the runway, several dark green military cars left the control tower area and sped down the runway—three sedans, running low to the ground because they were filled with the dark shapes of men in uniform. The fourth car was an armored car with a white star and other military markings—probably an Army paymaster vehicle.

Helplessly, wishing he had an idea of what was going on, Tim watched as a side payload door opened in the plane. Technicians with upturned earmuffs hung in the open door, waiting as the plane turned at a slight angle and stopped. The sedans slowed down and stopped nearby. The armored car drove right up under the cargo door. Men climbed out from all the cars, carrying machine guns.

A Military Police jeep pulled up. “What’s the matter, pal, are you lost?”

Tim’s scalp prickled. Here he was, on a military airstrip, in a stolen car...”Yeah, sorry. I just came to watch the planes a little bit. Is that okay?”

“Naw.” The MP, a little man in a gray windbreaker, with white helmet and leather, looked like an Irish pug. “Get back on the public road, Mac, or we’ll have to haul you in.”

“Yessir!” Tim said, putting the car in gear and rolling along with an apologetic wave. The MP jeep trailed him all the way around the airfield until he reached the main county road. He left the jeep sitting on the service road and turned right onto the county road to shake him.

Meanwhile, he’d glimpsed activity at the recently landed plane. Men in overalls lowered a heavy-looking wooden box from the plane. It took several men to lower it, straining, whatever it was. It took several more men on the ground to carry it to the armored car and put it in the rear.

Tim only had to wait about five minutes before the armored car and its three companions came around the bend and turned onto the road headed toward San Francisco. Having seen the heavy object, he guessed it was the purpose of the entire operation—what little thing like that could possibly warrant so much attention? Could it merely be a harmless payroll transfer, with him sitting here as a complete fool?

If so, he was about to implicate himself in a robbery.

Crane’s cars emerged from a side road. Tim had no way of warning the men in the government cars. Crane’s men drove alongside the Army cars. Four and four. Tim’s spine prickled. Was it possible Crane’s people could have known the exact number of escort cars?

The last three of Crane’s cars turned on flashing red lights and sirens. Obediently, the Army convoy pulled over. Crane’s vehicles blocked them.

Crane’s lead car pulled up alongside the armored car.

Meanwhile, a heavy moving van lumbered along, striking each of the three parked Crane cars so that they in turn rammed the Army sedans, forcing them into a ditch. One of the Army sedans actually rolled over. As dust drifted across the landscape, the drivers ran toward the armored car. Crane had the armored car blocked off, and now he and his accomplices pulled the driver and his assistant out by the collars of their leather jackets. Army security men swarmed from the ditch, where Tim surmised a few others lay injured. The security men had machine guns, but Crane’s men were quicker. There was a brief, noise gun battle during which machine guns blazed. Then the security men dropped back, pulling their injured and dead with them.

Meanwhile, the two leather-jacketed drivers on the road each received a vicious blow of a pistol butt to the head, and lay motionless.

Within ten seconds, the armored car and one sedan screamed away down the county highway toward San Francisco. Several security men stood in the road, shooting, but they were stranded, beyond immediate radio and telephone contact.

Tim stopped with a screech of tires and told the security men: “I saw the whole thing. Get in.” The car rocked as they piled in. Tim sped off, with doors still closing. One of the security men was bleeding from the shoulder, and held it to staunch the blood, while still gripping his pistol with the injured hand. “Thanks!” one of the men said. “Who are you?”

“A U.S. Navy officer with a stake in all this. We’ll have to flag down some cops along way,” Tim said.

“Roadblocks are already set up,” the men told him. “We weren’t expecting an ambush, but we have the route blocked out.”

Tim shook his head. “They have all that info from inside sources, from spies. They aren’t taking your routes. Look!”

As he spoke, the armored car and the sedan left the road in a cloud of dust. They plunged onto a road leading up into hilly brown countryside.

Tim made a split decision. He screeched to a halt. “One of you guys get out here and flag down an MP or a highway patrolman who has a radio dispatch car. The rest of us will chase them.”

Moments later, his car bounced along in the wake of the armored car.

“You have enough gas?” one of the men said worriedly.

“More than half a tank.”

“Press on!” someone said. They had the windows open, ready to shoot if they could get close enough to riddle the tires.

Abruptly, a half mile ahead, Crane changed tactics. They headed up a wide, gradual hill going west. The last bluish gleam of daylight lingered over the hilltop. The slope on which the cars raced was already falling into shadow. The armored car was the slowest of the vehicles.

Crane turned his sedan sideways and stopped to block Tim’s car. Several men got out of Crane’s sedan. The armored car kept on going.

The sedan was just a nuisance. Tim made a wide circle around it. Gunfire rang out, and the agents in Tim’s car returned fire, but nobody seemed to hit anyone.

Poof! One of headlights went out, and shattered glass tinged against the windows. The armored car reached the crest of the ridge and stopped. Men could be seen in silhouette against an orange-black sky of swirling clouds. They climbed out, opened the back doors, and wrestled out their heavy wooden crate.

On the distant horizon, a dark shape rapidly droned closer—a two engine plane, coming in low and slow with his flasher lights off. The pilot flew with firmness and skill, and he had two large, glaring headlights blazing away.

The roadblock sedan’s driver, realizing Tim had succeeded in running around him, started his engine and headed in an oblique path to head Tim off. The plane—a B-26 Marauder medium bomber—came in low and fast. The pilot was good—going to make a one shot landing. The men with the crate stood ready. Their leader—Crane, Tim was sure—stood waving a large .38 revolver and looking directly at Tim’s car.

The intercepting car roared up the hill, gaining. The agents in Tim’s car were all on that side, shooting away. Ting! Ting! Ting! Bullets sang as they shattered windows and whizzed through the car. One made a hideous whistling sound as it raced by Tim’s field of vision. The man beside him flew to one side, head hitting the window even as the window splattered with tomato gore.

Tim grabbed the man’s gun, and fired while driving. Being right-handed, he fired over his left elbow as he kept the gas pedal floored and the sedan bounced with screeches of tortured metal. Blam! Blam! Blam! Tim emptied the gun and dropped it on the floor so he could grab the wheel with both hands. The car kept gaining.

Ahead on the ridge, the Marauder landed, bounced several times, and rolled to a stop near the armored car. It was too dark to see details, but silhouetted against the swirling orange sky, Tim saw figures moving, a shape being lifted on a steel bar by means of heavy straps.

A security man behind him screamed and abruptly fell silent. The intercept car seemed to be out of bullets. It was a powerful vehicle, and it gained steadily. Now it drew closer and Tim could see the gritted teeth and wild eyes of its driver as he gripped the wheel with both hands.

He rammed Tim transversely against the left front fender. Instead of crumpling, Tim’s heavy car simply rolled over to the right in a fairly smooth, cylindrical rolling fashion. All Tim could do now was hang on to the ceiling straps and hope for the best. He had the wind knocked out of him, and felt his body flying around as the car rolled over and over. Tim’s eyes filled with grit, and his mouth became dry with dust from the field. Glass crackled like hot popcorn cooking, and bits of it sailed through the air. The car started to teeter as it rolled wildly, and gradually came to a rest on its side. Tim grabbed the gun out of a still figure’s unmoving hand and climbed up through the driver’s side window to offer combat.

“Stop him!”

“Drop the gun!”

“You’re finished!”

“Stop right there!”

Tim was surrounded, and he slowly raised his hands.

Meanwhile, on the ridge, several men struggled with their load and the Marauder waited. Its headlights were off now, and the plane sat with loudly roaring engines waiting to take off.

Several men, holding guns on Tim, dragged him down from the car. Tim lay on the ground, face down, with his hands behind his back. A man’s boot sat squarely in the center of his back with a heel on his left shoulder blade.

“Don’t kill him. Malone wants him.”

Malone.

Tim looked up, and saw Jaguar running down the hill waving a gun. The corners of his dark suit jacket flapped, and his hat flew off. “I want that son of a bitch!”

While Jaguar—or whatever his real name was—came closer, Ivor Crane regarded Tim with a certain haunted look in his eyes that said the game was over for Crane. “How did you know?” he asked Tim quietly.

Tim said: “It took me a year or so, as we were having bangers and mash back at that pub in London, to realize that you gave your game away long ago. When we first met, you said that the real Malone got a knife in the back in Mauritania.”

“Yes?” Crane looked genuinely puzzled, and tense as if wondering what else Tim knew about him. No doubt there was a lot to know about Ivor Crane.

“You couldn’t have known that. Willi didn’t make it out alive, and he was the only one besides me who knew that Malone and that Belgian woman were stabbed to death.” Willi had pulled the knife out and thrown it far into the night, and most likely Malone’s body had been charred badly enough to conceal the knife wound.

“Yes, and so?” Crane stared at Tim.

Tim stared in turn, remembering the shadow who had stepped out of the bush and fired the shots that had killed Willi and nearly finished Tim off too. Tim gasped. “You were there. You had to be. Why have I been so dense? You killed them. Why?”

Crane grinned. “Malone was getting out of hand. Donovan didn’t know what a gambler he was, but he was a good intelligence officer and he got onto me.” He shrugged with the fatalistic finality of one who had betrayed his family, his army, and his nation and had no rear exit left.

“So you killed Malone. You stuck that knife in his back and I came along at a convenient moment.” Tim spat at Crane’s feet. “You had me impersonate Malone, and now this guy Jaguar is impersonating me—or Malone. Which is it? Quite a valuable guy, Malone, even though he’s dead.”

“You poor brainwashed capitalist fool,” Crane said and stepped aside as Jaguar reached them.

Tim didn’t know Jaguar’s real name, and he could readily assume it was Russian, but he’d forever think of the man as Jaguar. He told Crane: “I hope you’ll be happy living in Uncle Joe’s worker paradise.”

“Put him in the plane,” Jaguar yelled hoarsely, waving his gun at Tim. Tim really saw, for the first time, that his former handler in London, whom he’d met in the ruins of St. Dunstan in the East, actually looked vaguely Slavic, with faintly almond-shaped eyes as if he had some trace Cossack blood—a modern, educated, very sophisticated inheritor of the Golden Horde. Most likely he was Russian.

Crane put his gun away and pulled his raincoat shut. He nodded to Jaguar and started to walk toward the plane.

Without any preambles, Jaguar loosed several bullets into Crane’s back, and the man dropped onto the grass, where he lay in a weirdly twisted position, like a crumpled question mark of shock and betrayal.

“Lucky man,” one of the men growled at Tim in a foreign-accented voice. “You get to live. Into the plane!”

“How convenient that you happened to show up just now,” Jaguar told Tim. “You will be an added bit of insurance that our little pilot does what she is told. Get in!” He motioned with his gun.

“What about the poor slobs in the car back there?” someone said. Several of the speakers had European accents.

“All dead or injured. They can’t hurt us now.”

“Leave them. Their pals will find them soon enough.” Jaguar laughed and added: “I’ll bet they think Crane died gallantly in the line of duty, and they’ll give him a hero’s burial.” Several men joined him in laughter.

They hustled Tim out of the car, to the plane, and up into the small loading bay. Already sitting on the floor of the plane, strapped to a ring in the floor, was the wooden crate. It was a heavy pine box covered with phony shipping tags and smelling of machine oil. It had heavy rope handles on four sides, and several tags signaling danger—no warnings of radioactivity, but Tim was sure if the box were dropped, and if the lead container inside broke, its handlers would run for the hills.

The interior of the plane smelled of oil and burnt welding flux and dirty canvas. Its sides were hung with olive-drab quilting and equipment. Tim was bundled into the plane and someone tied his hands behind his back with a thick dirty rope.

Jaguar’s four men climbed on board, carrying a badly injured fifth man. Tim assumed that the dead ones being left behind had no identifying papers or other characteristics to reveal who they were or for whom they were working. The men threw large bundles on board and climbed in.

The cargo bay door slammed shut, and the plane jerked forward. It was designed for fast take offs, Tim knew from his casual reading in magazines and newspapers. A tricky plane to fly, which required highly skilled piloting, it could carry cargo or a bomb load of 3000 pounds over a range of 2000 miles at up to 300 mph and at a service ceiling exceeding 20,000 feet. It would carry five crewmembers and offered as armament four 0.30-inch machine guns poking through at least one Plexiglas blister on top of the fuselage behind the wings. It was powered by two gutsy Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engines and when it took off, it shot along and zoomed up into the air fast enough to slam the unwary back in their seats.

The heavy object strained at its anchoring bolts, while the men in back held on to whatever they could. The deck pitched at a 45 degree angle as the plane climbed, piloted by some reckless maniac who would land in the dark on a bumpy hilltop without lights, and take off into the unknown without an ounce of fear.

Tim rolled backward and landed against a quilt-draped bulkhead.

“Tim!” a familiar woman’s cry reached the cargo bay. Tim looked forward and there, through a Plexiglas interior window above a hulking storage unit, sat Corie in the pilot seat. She had a large shiner staining one side of her face, and her cheek bone looked as though someone had none too gently put a boot to it.

“Are you okay?” she cried.

“Yes! Just drive and watch where you are going!”

“We are heading for Montana!” she yelled. “I had to do it or they said they’d hurt Meg. I’m sorry, Tim!”

“Shut up!” Jaguar yelled.

“They’re Soviets,” she yelled to Tim. “Don’t trust these lousy Commies.” She yelled at Crane: “What are you going to do, shoot me?”

She rolled the plane left, right, left, yawing angrily in powerful snapping motions that sent men and equipment tumbling about. “Try me, you stupid dong. You hurt him, I’ll kill all of us. Do you understand me, you Communist hyena?” She added: “They are making me fly to Great Falls, Montana, Tim.”

Jaguar had a dark expression. He appeared to swallow hard, and he abruptly put his gun away. “We don’t need any nonsense,” he said. As the plane leveled out, he walked over to Tim and sat down. “Okay, Nordhall. How did you happen to get from there to here? I thought you were a dumb bastard, the way we led you around in London.”

“I guess I learned a few tricks in the meantime.”

Jaguar rubbed his palms up and down his face with a huge sigh of frustration. “What a nuisance.”

“You hurt him,” Corie said, “and I’ll fly this tub into the first mountain I spot. Trust me. I don’t’ make jokes, especially with larvae like you.”

Tim noticed again, as he had in London, that Jaguar spoke excellent American idiom, but now Tim recognized the slight accent—Russki. He told Jaguar: “I finally did figure out you were not exactly on our side. What’s your plan, Marx?”

“I’ll ask the questions. Don’t press your luck.”

Tim kept trying to assess the other man, looking for an opening, some weakness to exploit. Jaguar projected an air of seeming relaxed, but with some solid inner armor, some monumental self-assurance. Another fanatic, Tim thought. Our age is full of them. Nuts on the right, nuts on the left. “Looks like we’re all trusting our luck here in this flying hand grenade. What’s in the crate?”

Jaguar grinned, picking up on the metaphor. “The biggest hand grenade you ever saw. Pure German uranium oxide. Crane was working with my side the whole time.”

“And you shot him.”

“He was one of legions like him that work for us. You people don’t stand a chance. The Socialist world will think back on you as we look back on cavemen.”

“Pause for breath,” Tim said. “You’re turning blue.”

“Bah!” Jaguar said. He waved to his men and said loudly. “Relax, everyone. This will go smoothly. Let’s not waste our energy.” He walked into the cockpit and sat in the empty copilot seat. He said loudly to Corie, so everyone could hear. “Let’s make a nice deal, eh? You get us down in one piece, and I’ll give you and this capitalist swine a chance to run for your lives in the forest later. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Everyone wins. Do we have a deal?”

She glared straight ahead and said nothing.

He took out his pistol, cocked it, and aimed it long-armed at Tim’s head.

She thrust her jaw out stubbornly.

He rose and walked toward Tim, keeping the gun aimed at Tim. “You want your little friend to live...?”

“Okay!” she yelled.

Jaguar grinned. “I knew you’d be a bargaining chip for the little spitfire.”

Corie said: “Okay, it’s a deal. Leave him alone!”

Tim said nothing, thinking that by now someone must have stopped to help the security man he’d left on the highway. Soon the government might figure out that a plane had landed to make off with the armored car’s cargo. The tracks near the abandoned armored car alone would tell that story. From there, top-secret new radars could track the lone plane as it cruised through the sky.

For hours, the plane droned northeast over the Rockies, over the Continental Divide, down the eastern slope.

Jaguar kept Tim and Corie apart. At times, Jaguar would go sit in the co-pilot seat and check the navigation maps and instruments. Tim, meanwhile, was kept sitting against the rear bulkhead. Tim was added insurance that Corie would do as she was told.

The Soviet agents opened some of the bundles they’d thrown in, and out came heavy clothing. They started dressing as if they were going to some Arctic rendez-vous...or maybe Alaska, Tim thought, and then Siberia?

As the hours passed, and the night wore on, Tim wondered if there would be a refueling stop, but he remembered the specs on the plane—because he’d worked on some retrofits and logistical spares concerns for all the major U.S. and Allied warplanes—if she were fully fueled, and he had no reason to think she wasn’t if these guys had planned right, then she could cruise 2000 miles on a fuel load. That would get them to Great Falls, no problem.

Great Falls...that would be the home of Malmstrom Air Force base. Tim’s office in San Francisco had sent cases full of documents to the Russians via courier plane by this route. Given the horrific losses of ships on the North Atlantic convoy routes in 1941-3, FDR had set up a northern air route under Lend-Lease, sending everything but the kitchen sink to the Reds. The Soviets would load supplies at Malmstrom. U.S. pilots would fly the planes to Alaska, where Soviet pilots would board and fly the planes the rest of the way into Siberia and points beyond, anything from Novosibirsk to Leningrad. Tim had heard complaints that the Soviets had sticky fingers and tended to stuff anything that wasn’t nailed down, including high-level secrets, into diplomatic courier pouches that were then immune from U.S. or Canadian search and seizure. Suddenly, the reason for the gunny sack with Soviet markings became apparent. This had to be one of the most audacious coups in history—stealing part of an atomic bomb right out from under the noses of the Americans—even as they were convoying it through San Francisco to the docks for shipping into the Pacific Ocean, to finally end up devastating some Japanese city—and then using U.S. aircraft under Lend Lease to fly the stolen parts to Soviet territory with impunity—the most critical detour in history if Stalin’s agents and fifth columnists got away with it.

“Where are we now?” Tim asked.

Jaguar waved gun at Tim. “Shut up. You don’t want to know.”

Tim kept his silence, but he was planning frantically. How to derail this plan, while saving at least Corie and, with luck, himself?

He had no way of talking with her. Any signals they sent each other would mean the other men on board would also see them. What to do?

He sat back, racking his mind, trying to remember details of the aircraft from his review of parts lists, catalogs, diagrams, photographs, manuals, anything that would provide a clue.

He tried to picture various scenarios, but they all ended up with him and Corie dead and the bomb parts lost.

Jaguar walked around handing out bomber-style breathing apparatus, including one black rubber mask to Tim. The mask covered the mouth and nose. It had an articulated hose that could be plugged into either a chest oxygen pack or to a system of pipes supplying oxygen to various locations within the aircraft. Jaguar and two aides dragged a large, bulky package toward the bomb crate—a parachute. It was a large chute, the kind used for dropping bulky things like crates of ammo or food or water. They untied the satchel from its anchor ring. Then the men carefully and methodically prepared their satchel for air drop. They weren’t going to land in the middle of Malmstrom Army Air Field and taxi around with a stolen atomic bomb. They were going to drop the satchel within a few hours’ drive, probably in the wild. They’d recover it by automobile and drive to a Soviet installation, where it would be properly repackaged in a diplomatic pouch. Then, and only then, would Russians drive it to the airstrip at Malmstrom, probably in a fake courier truck.

Jaguar and his men were anxious to get on with things, and they did not want to be caught short on time—so they had their crate sitting on the deck, pretty as a present with a bow in it, ready to air drop. Yes, and the plane was a bomber, Tim thought, which meant it had a bomb bay.

He studied Corie, and wondered what she was thinking. She was watching the proceedings from the corners of her eyes.

As the Rockies fell behind, and they were flying over Idaho and into Montana, Jaguar had his men open the bomb bay doors. The cabin filled with cold, fresh air. Tim and the rest of the complement started using their oxygen—Tim, from the chest pack, the others including Corie from the aircraft supply. Below, Tim knew, was a four mile high column of wide-open atmosphere—and sprawling below that, a wilderness of forests, mountains, and plains. If one were to lose a bomb in there, say by throwing it out prematurely, one might never see it again.

Jaguar and his men pushed the heavy crate so that it rested by the open bomb bay.

Tim watched as the Soviet agents went about their agenda. They rigged explosives on a timer on the bank of oxygen tanks supplying the plane with breathing air. Tim puzzled about this, until he realized—they weren’t planning to land at all. That, in turn, meant Jaguar had lied, which was no surprise, given that he’d murdered Crane in cold blood. So what did it mean? They planned to parachute out with the uranium and let the plane explode in mid-flight to cover up any further evidence. That meant they must have quite an operation down on the ground. No doubt they were shipping everything to the USSR via Malmstrom except the Statue of Liberty, and that might be next. In their own way, they were more frightening than the Nazis, Tim thought.

The fifth man had died, and now Jaguar’s men carried the body in. Under Jaguar’s direction, they propped the dead man up in the copilot’s chair and strapped the body in. He had been changed into Army flying togs and looked quite authentic. As a charred mess of fragments, who would ever know the real truth of what had happened here at 20,000 feet? Tim now felt an ever greater sense of urgency, not only to abort their mission, but to save Corie’s life, and his own.

Jaguar, who had been studying the navigation map again, seemed to feel Tim’s thoughts at the back of his head. “Don’t worry,” he told Tim, “I have a plan to fix you right up.” He told Corie: “If you kill us all at this point, my people will recover the crate anyway, so that’s no longer a threat.”

“Let him go,” Corie said to Jaguar, about Tim, as she shook with anger and fear. Her black eye was darker than ever. Her teeth were gritted with determination.

“Shut up and drive,” Jaguar said carelessly, laughing. “Come on, boys, let’s tie this character up and send him out into the world in style.”

Jaguar and two men maneuvered the quarter-ton crate closer to the bomb bay. Their hair whipped in the wind, and they looked alien with their breathing tubes dangling from black snouts. Tim watched the other two men as they readied the bomb sight. This was going to be a precision drop, probably into some mountain valley where other men might be waiting with a pickup truck.

Tim lay helplessly against the bulkhead where they had tied him. He could feel icy cold wind shooting in through tiny cracks in the metal around him; the plane had evidently seen a good deal of use. The metal itself was chilly as a refrigerator.

Jaguar stepped around the bombsight and peered into it. The highly secret apparatus was capable of logically computing factors such as velocity, altitude, and more, in conjunction with the operator’s precise visual aiming at the target. “Ten minutes over target,” newly appointed bombardier Jaguar announced. A slight wind current bucked the plane. Jaguar glanced up. “Don’t try anything cute,” he growled at Corie, who still flew loosely with both hands on the controls so that her whole body rocked in sympathy with each bounce.

The Soviet agents started putting on parachutes. Now Tim understood the heavy leather clothing and goggles. They weren’t going to Alaska or Siberia just now—they were about to parachute into the night above Montana...right near some Soviet lair outside Malmstrom airbase.

“Goodbye, Corie,” Tim said. “I love you.” He signaled for her to get her chest breathing pack ready.

“I love you too, Hon.” She winked her eyes shut as a sign of understanding. “Sorry, I can’t do anything to help us now.”

“Steady on course,” Jaguar growled. “Remember our deal.”

She retorted: “I’ll remember it if you do.”

“Steady,” Jaguar said, looking down into the bombsight. The other men leaned against the crate containing the bomb material in its heavy container, wrapped in the parachute.

Tim and Corie exchanged desperate looks. Both were calculating, split second by split second. Their situation was on the edge of hopeless.

“Steady,” Jaguar said. “Two minutes until the drop.”

Tim thought about telling her to bank upward. It might throw the men and the crate out the door. It wouldn’t get rid of Jaguar, and the crate would get into the wrong hands. And then there would be no reason to keep him and Corie alive. No, there had to be something, quick, but what?

“One minute,” Jaguar said, holding his black snout against his face as he looked down into the bombsight.

For a second the other four men were frozen in an attitude of being ready to push. They were bent forward, ready to strain against the pallet holding their weapon. Breathing tubes hung from their faces.

The next second, Jaguar and his four minions backed away coughing and yelling. They tore their masks off and doubled over, choking. Jaguar turned red as a beet, and his eyes were wide in horror as spittle dribbled from his tomato-red mouth.

Corie laughed, and Tim looked at her numbly. She held up a piece of tubing and waved it, while winking at Tim. He saw what she had done: of the various conduits running along the bulkheads, she had disconnected an elbow joint in the main oxygen line. She had similarly disconnected some other line—probably the fire extinguishing system, with its unbreathable and no doubt toxic contents—and then she’d hooked the two together using the breathing hose from her own ship apparatus. Meanwhile, she was breathing with a chest pack she’d dug out from under her seat.

Still tied up, Tim strained desperately to reach the nearest of the agents in the hope of snagging a gun. No luck.

Corie used her booted foot to shoot a weapon across the steel-grated floor at him: a flare pistol.

Jaguar and his men were still choking and helpless, but they wouldn’t be for long. Jaguar had boundless determination. Already he hung over the bombsight like a drowning man over a life preserver, wiping his eyes with his sleeves while staring down into the aiming viewer. He dribbled mucus, saliva, tears, even flecks of vomit onto the glass surface. “Come back around!” he yelled at Corie.

Corie said “Ha!” and stepped from the cockpit. Her parachute straps dangled nearly to the floor as she ran to Tim’s side. With a wicked-looking utility knife, she cut him loose from the bulkhead.

Jaguar screamed: “Damn you!” and pulled out a pistol.

Corie wrapped a heavy-duty cargo strap around herself and Tim. Together, Tim and Corie sidled toward the bomb bay.

Jaguar’s companions were recovering from their own vomiting fits and came running around the side of the crate. Tim shot them with the flare gun, and they backed away screaming in a bundle of flaming greenish-yellow phosphorus and waving arms. Their goggles looked otherworldly as they struggled for breath and batted at their flaming clothes.

Jaguar aimed the pistol and fired. The shot went wild.

The plane bucked, and Jaguar staggered back against the bulkhead, holding his arm up to shield his eyes.

Corie and Tim jumped into the night.

Above them, the plane sailed away, with the men inside screaming. The plane glowed like a lantern about to explode.

A single parachute fluttered away. Probably the unstoppable Jaguar, Tim thought. Malone dies again, only to be reborn again some other time.

Tim felt himself jerked about violently in the freezing wind, and for a few seconds he lost consciousness. Without oxygen at this altitude, he’d been dead in a minute. Corie held his mask to his face so he could breathe from his chest pack, while she breathed from hers.

His last view of the plane was as it sailed away glowing, and trailing smoke, a roiling funeral pyre. When it was a good ten miles away over empty mountains, its fuel lines caught, and streamers of bluish flame licked around the plane. Then a shower of sparks. A powerful explosion that sent the wings flying off and buckled the fuselage in half. The wing tanks exploded, and a deluge of fire and radioactive dust tumbled down through the atmosphere.

Tim and Corie sailed silently down into the bosom of an enormous impenetrable pine forest, and he bet the forest rangers would find them before Jaguar’s accomplices did.