51
THERE HAD BEEN no need to tape their eyes open. Stacy, Mancuso, and Weatherhill had watched the viewing screen in horrified fascination just before the picture went black during Pitt’s fight with the robodog. Then sadness and shock flooded their emotions as Kamatori fiendishly aimed another camera at the blood-drenched ground.
The four of them sat chained to metal chairs grouped in a small semicircle around a huge high-resolution video screen set into the wall. The two robots Giordino called McGoon and McGurk stood guard with the latest in Japanese automatic rifles aimed at the back of their prisoners’ heads.
The unexpected defeat of their plans and total helplessness had stunned them worse than the virtual sentence of death. A hundred plans to salvage their predicament rushed through their minds. None had the slightest hope of getting off the ground. They were conscious now of little but approaching death.
Stacy turned and looked across at Giordino to see how he was taking the crushing blow of his friend’s loss. But his face was completely composed and thoughtful, with no trace of sorrow or rage. Giordino sat there in icy calm, his eyes curiously staring at the action on the screen as if it was an adventure serial at a Saturday matinee.
A short time later, Kamatori entered the room, sat down crosslegged on a mat, and poured a cup of saki. “I trust you watched the results of the hunt,” he said between sips. “Mr. Pitt did not play by the rules. He attacked the robot, altered its programming, and died through his own stupidity.”
“He would have died by your hand anyway!” spat Mancuso. “At least he cheated you of that piece of butchery.”
Kamatori’s lips curled downward briefly and then up in a sinister smile. “I assure you, there will be no repeat of your friend’s performance. A new robodog is presently being reprogrammed so that any unexpected damage to his system will not result in an attack on his quarry.”
“That’s a break,” grunted Giordino.
“You scumbag,” hissed Mancuso, red-faced and straining against his chains. “I’ve seen the brutalities men like you did to Allied prisoners of war. You delight in the torture of others, but can’t stand the thought of suffering yourself.”
Kamatori observed Mancuso with the same expression of haughty distaste he might have displayed at observing a rat baring its teeth from a sewer. “You shall be the last I run to ground, Mr. Mancuso. You will suffer at watching the agony of the others until your turn.”
“I volunteer to be next,” said Weatherhill calmly. His mind skipped over escape schemes and began concentrating on one act. He figured if he did nothing else, killing Kamatori would be worth dying for.
Kamatori slowly shook his head. “Miss Stacy Fox has that honor. A professional female operative will make an interesting challenge. Far better than Dirk Pitt, I hope’ He was a shocking disappointment.”
For the first time Weatherhill felt a trace of nausea run through him. He had never been afraid of death. Half his life had been spent on the brink between living or being killed. But sitting helplessly while a woman was brutally murdered, a woman he knew and respected, made him sick.
Stacy’s face was pale as Kamatori rose to his feet and ordered the robotic guards to release her chains, but she glared at him with icy contempt. The locks were opened by an electronic signal, and she was roughly pulled to her feet free of the chair.
Kamatori pointed toward the door that opened to the outside of the room. “Go,” he commanded in a sharp voice. “I will begin the pursuit in one hour.”
Stacy took what she thought was her last look at the others. Mancuso seemed stricken, while Weatherhill stared back at her with great sorrow in his eyes. But it was Giordino who caused her to do a double take. He gave her a wink, a nod, and a smile.
“You’re wasting time,” Kamatori said coldly.
“No need to dash off,” came a voice from behind the two robotic guards.
Stacy turned, certain her eyes were deceiving her.
Dirk Pitt stood on the threshold, leaning negligently against the doorframe, gazing past her at Kamatori. Both his hands rested on the hilt of along saber whose tip stabbed the polished floor. His deep green eyes were set, an anticipatory grin was on his rugged face.
“Sorry I’m late, but I had to take a dog to obedience school.
52
NOBODY MOVED, NOBODY SPOKE. The robots stood motionless, waiting for a command from Kamatori, their data processors not fully programmed to react at Pitt’s sudden appearance. But the samurai was in the opening moments of shock at seeing Pitt standing there without a scratch on his body. His lips parted and his eyes spread, and then slowly the beginning of a forced smile twisted the lines on his curious face.
“You did not die,” he said as his mind pushed through the curtain of surprise and his face became a dark cloud. “You faked your death, and yet the blood—”
“I borrowed a few things from your hospital,” Pitt explained casually, “and performed a bloodletting on myself.”
“But you had nowhere to go but into the surf or onto the rocks below the cliff. And if you survived the fall and dropped into the water, you would have been swept away by the vicious undercurrents. You could not have survived.”
“I used the tree you saw floating in the surf to cushion my fall into the water. Then I floated with the current until it released me a few hundred meters from shore. After drifting a short distance, I caught the incoming tide and swam until I reached a small cove and climbed the palisades below the resort.”
The surprise in Kamatori’s eyes transformed to intense curiosity. “The security perimeter, how was it possible for you to slip through the robotic guards?”
“Speaking figuratively, I knocked them out.”
“No good.” Kamatori shook his head. “Their detection systems are flawless. They are not programmed to let an intruder pass.”
“Bet me.” Pitt lifted the saber, rammed its point into the wooden floor, and released his grip, leaving it quivering in the polished wood. He took the small object from under his arm that could now be seen as a sock with something wrapped inside it. He moved unobtrusively toward one of the robots from the rear. Before it could turn, he pressed the thing inside the sock against the plastic wall surrounding the computerized midsection. The roboguard immediately went rigid and immobile.
Realizing too late what Pitt was doing, Kamatori shouted, “Shoot him!”
But Pitt had ducked under the muzzle of the second robot’s automatic rifle and shoved the strange object against its processor. Like the first, it became inert.
“How did you do that?” Stacy gasped.
Pitt pulled the sock off a small six-volt dry cell from the portable X-ray machine and an iron pipe wrapped with two meters of copper wire. He held the package up for all to see.
“A magnet. It erased the programs from the disks inside the robots’ computer processors and fouled up their integrated circuits.”
“A temporary reprieve, nothing more,” commented Kamatori. ‘ ‘ I badly miscalculated your ingenuity, Mr. Pitt, but you have accomplished little but prolonging your life by a few more minutes.”
“At least we’re armed now,” said Weatherhill, nodding at the stationary guns held by the robots.
Despite the turn of events, Kamatori could not conceal the expression of triumph on his face. He was back in total control. Pitt’s near-miraculous resurrection had been for nothing. “The guns are tightly molded to the flexible arms of the robots. You cannot remove them with anything less than a cutting grinder. You are as helpless as before.”
“Then we’re in the same boat now that your bodyguards have been unplugged,” said Pitt, tossing the magnet
