Germ

there.'

'If Atropos or whoever he has working for him—a pilot maybe— does see you, then you want to leave this . . .'

She leaned over, rooted in her gym bag, and held up the gauntlet.

'But you can't just leave it,' she continued. 'You have to pretend to lose it accidentally, drop it while running away or something.'

Allen shook his head. 'Why give it to them at all? You really are an exasperating woman.'

She set the gauntlet on her lap, and again she fumbled around in the gym bag. When she straightened, empty-handed, Allen presumed she'd misplaced something. Then he noticed the item resting in her upturned palm. It was about the size of a dime, but several times thicker, black. He leaned closer.

'A satellite-assisted tracking device,' she announced. 'Goody was going to place it on Vero so we wouldn't lose him. I have the equipment to track this puppy to hell and back. It's a beacon of the gods—as close to omniscience as we'll ever get.'

She examined the device, used her fingernail to rotate an almost invisible switch set into its case. Then, picking up the gauntlet, black and muscular and hideous, she carefully slipped in her hand, the tracking device on a fingertip.

'I'm going to put the SATD into one of the fingers. If I've guessed right, Atropos will want to find out who was walking around with one of his own special weapons and who made an attempt to breach his plane.' She withdrew her arm, then shook the gauntlet a few times to make sure the device wouldn't fall out. 'The only clue he'll have is the gauntlet.'

Allen nodded. 'He'll have it examined it for fingerprints.'

'I'm counting on that to keep him from finding the SATD too soon. He'll want to preserve any fingerprints that may be inside. Kendrick said Atropos is freelance; he goes where the jobs and the money are. I think he'll turn to his current employer for help in finding out who this new guy is. And I bet Litt has the means to lift and analyze a fingerprint. By the time they discover the tracking device, I'm praying that it's smack in the middle of their home base.'

'So he takes it to them, and we find out where they are,' Stephen said from the driver's seat. His deep voice was frigid, all business.

'Wait a sec,' Allen said. 'Why can't we simply attach it to their plane? Wouldn't that be safer?'

'We can't be sure the Citation will go all the way to their base. What if they land at a major airport and take another form of transportation to their final destination?'

'And even if they don't use the plane,' Stephen said, 'if they send it by courier or something, we'll still find out where they are.'

Despite himself, Allen felt excitement lift his mood. 'Want to bet it ends up at whatever swank address Kendrick Reynolds calls home?' he asked. 'Or at one of the agencies he controls?'

Stephen cranked the wheel, jostling the van over what felt like a canyon wall. Allen turned to see the cop supply store's front window looming large in the windshield.

'First, Allen, we make sure you're well protected,' Julia said behind him. 'Then we make you look like someone Atropos doesn't know.'

sixty-three

Now, disguised as Julia's 'new player,' Allen tried not to think of how completely alone he was. Julia and Stephen were waiting in the hangar, in the comfort of a Lear jet they'd secured as a staging area for this 'operation,' as Julia called it. He mustered his courage and edged to the corner of the hangar. He peered first left, at the parked planes, then right, toward the distant terminal.

All clear.

He stepped out of the shadowy alley and into the waning light, heading toward Atropos's Cessna. He walked along the front of a hangar, past the huge closed doors, moving fast. At the last hangar before a long stretch of tarmac, he heard music and saw that the sliding doors stood about five feet apart. As he approached, Freddie Mercury's mournful vocals swelled:

Mama, just killed a man

Put a gun against his head

Pulled my trigger, now he's dead . . .

A loud clang, followed by a string of expletives, slipped out the door. Allen hurried past the opening without looking. A sign jutted from the corner of the hangar: CAUTION—AIRPLANE CROSSING. He walked under it, casting a furtive glance to the left at an abandoned-looking building fifty yards beyond the end of the hangar. Wooden crates, oil drums, and tires formed a huge wedge against one side.

For about sixty seconds he felt utterly exposed—empty tarmac stretching away to a runway on his right; on his left, only crumbling asphalt, followed by a field of dry weeds for a hundred yards to the perimeter fence. Behind him lay the hangars, and way past them, the terminal. He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder. Instead, he tried to identify the planes he was approaching: a Beechcraft Bonanza, a Piper Cherokee, a Gulfstream IV—sweet. Then he was among the planes and felt the burden of exposure fade away like the remaining light.

The Cessna loomed larger with each plane he passed. It was parked at least fifty paces from the last plane. Worse, it was canted toward the terminal, toward him. A person sitting in the cockpit would have to be blind to miss his approach. But he needed to get right on top of the thing for Julia's scheme to work. To get there, he hoped to come off as an aviation geek with a weakness for big-ticket jets; later he'd be the menace Julia thought the assailants would respond to.

He stepped up to the last plane before the Cessna, putting it between himself and his target. It was a Piper Saratoga, the model that carried John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, and his sister-in-law to the bottom of the Atlantic. He pretended to examine the nose propeller but was actually scrutinizing the Cessna. The cockpit windows were too high, the interior too dark to know whether he was being watched in return. Through the six oval port windows on this side, he caught movement, a flicker as though someone had walked past all of them. Again light flickered against them, and he realized something inside was strobing softly, a television or computer screen, or maybe a security device.

The sun had traveled beyond the horizon now, pulling the last glow of solar radiance from the sky. Twilight began its brief presentation, with the scent of night close behind. The jet appeared more ominous in this light, more like a living thing that killed to survive.

Absently keeping his hand on the prop's nose cone, Allen maneuvered to the other side of the Piper, made an insincere attempt to examine a propeller, then broke away and strode for the Cessna. He tried to appear casual— just a fellow pilot admiring a beautiful flying machine, or airport security ensuring satisfaction with the accommodations. He'd have to decide which he was if he happened to be challenged before he could tamper with the jet's entry door—thereby becoming a threat, aka the new player. He pulled the gauntlet from under his Windbreaker and held it against the side of his upper leg. He cringed at the gravel crunching loudly under his feet.

Now that he was close, he tried to appear 'sneaky, malicious, and knowledgeable'—Julia's words again. He bent his knees a bit and glanced around quickly, thinking these things fell under the 'sneaky' category. He hoped he'd only have to rattle the door latch and run; no problem—what ten-year-old hadn't done that? If that didn't stir whoever was inside—Oh Lord, let it be a pilot, not Atropos—he wasn't sure what he'd do. Rattle-and-run was one thing; it was something altogether different to slap on a deer suit and tromp down to the watering hole during hunting season. He tucked the gauntlet back inside his Windbreaker. Nerves would have him extracting and replacing it every ten seconds if he let them.

He skirted around the jet's fiercely pointed nose and found himself standing in front of the closed door. He turned the latch, and the door sprang open, a portion hinging up, a section with built-in steps coming down. An air- conditioned breeze blew past him, tinged with a faint sweet fragrance—aftershave or overripe fruit. The interior was dark except for the grayish-blue strobing he'd seen through the windows. He leaned in. A galley with sink and cupboards sat opposite the door. The cockpit to the left. Leaning farther, he saw the cabin was set up like a studio apartment. He took a step up. The strobe came from a big plasma TV on the back wall. It was flashing through