Avenger

There was silence.

"Right," said Van Rensberg. "They will have to be recalled to the barracks and checked on sight by their squad commanders. May I go to the radio shack and issue the orders?"

Zilic nodded dismissively.

It took an hour. Outside the windows the sun set across the chain of crests. The tropical plunge to darkness began. Van Rensberg came back.

"Every one accounted for at the barracks. All eighty attested to by their junior officers. So he's still out there somewhere."

"Or inside the wall," suggested McBride. "Your fifth squad is the one patrolling this mansion."

Zilic turned to his security chief. "You ordered twenty of them in here without identity checks?" he asked icily.

"Certainly not, sir. They are the elite squad. They are commanded by Ja

"Have him report here," ordered the Serb.

The young South African appeared at the library door several minutes later, snapping smartly to attention.

"Lieutenant Duplessis, in response to my order you chose twenty men, including yourself, and brought them here by truck two hours ago?"

"Yes, sir."

"You know every one of them by sight?"

"Yes, sir."

"Forgive me, but when you jogged through the gate, what was your formation of march?" asked McBride.

"I was at the head. Sergeant Grey behind me. Then the men, three abreast, six per column. Eighteen men."

"Nineteen," said McBride. "You forgot the tail-ender."

In the silence the mantelpiece clock seemed intrusively loud.

"What tail-ender?" whispered Van Rensberg.

"Hey, don't get me wrong, guys. I could have been mistaken. I thought I saw a nineteenth man come around the corner of the truck and jogged through at the rear. Same uniform. I thought nothing of it."

At that moment the clock struck 6:00, and the first bomb went off. They were no bigger than golf balls and completely harmless, more like bird scarers than weapons of war. They had eight-hour-delay timers, and Dexter had hurled all ten of them over the wall around 10:00 A.M. He knew exactly where the thickest shrubbery dotted the parkland around the house from the aerial photographs, and in his teenage years he had been quite a good pitcher. The crackers did, nevertheless, make a sound on detonation remarkably similar to the *whack-whump* of a highpowered rifle shot.

In the library someone shouted, "Cover," and all five men hit the floor.

Kulac rolled, came up, and stood over his master with his gun out. Then the first guard outside, believing he had spotted the gunman, fired back. Two more bomblets detonated, and the exchange of rifle fire intensified. A window shattered. Kulac fired back toward the darkness outside.

The Serb had had enough. He ran at a crouch through the door at the back of the library, along the corridor, and down the steps to the basement. McBride followed suit, with Kulac bringing up the rear, facing backward.

The radio room was off the lower corridor. The duty operator, when his employer burst in, was whitefaced in the neon light, trying to cope with a welter of shouts and yells on the waveband of the guards' breastpocket radios.

"Speaker, identify. Where are you? What is going on?" he shouted.

No one listened as the firefight in the darkness intensified. Zilic reached forward to his console and threw a switch. Silence descended.

"Alert the airfield. All pilots, all ground staff. I want my helicopter, and I want it now."

"It's not serviceable, sir.

"Then the Hawker. I want it airworthy."

"Now, sir?"

"Now. Not tomorrow, not in an hour, now!"

The crackle of fire in the far distance brought the man in the long grass to his knees. It was the deepest dusk before complete darkness, the hour when the eyes play tricks and shadows become threats. He lifted the bicycle to its wheels, put the toolbox in the front basket, pedalled across the runway to the escarpment side, and began to cycle the mile and a half to the hangars at the far end. The mechanic's coveralls with the "Z" logo of the Zeta Corporation on the back were u

The Serb turned to McBride. "This is where we part company, Mr. McBride. I fear you will have to return to Washington by your own means. The problem here will be sorted, and I shall be getting a new head of security. You can tell Mr. Devereaux I shall not renege on our deal. For the moment I intend to kill the intervening days enjoying the hospitality of friends of mine in the emirates."

The garage was at the end of the basement corridor, and the Mercedes was armoured. Kulac drove, his employer seated in the rear. McBride stood helplessly in the garage as the door rolled up and back. The limousine slid under it, across the gravel, and out of the stillopening gates in the wall. By the time the Mercedes had rolled up to it, the hangar was ablaze with light. The small tractor was hitched to the nosewheel assembly of the Hawker 1000 to tow it out onto the apron.

The last mechanic fastened down the last hatch on the engines, clattered down the gantry, and pulled the structure away from the airframe. In the illuminated cockpit, Captain Stepanovic, with his young French copilot beside him, was checking instruments, gauges, and systems on the strength of the auxiliary power unit.

Zilic and Kulac watched from the shelter of the car. When the Hawker was out on the apron, the door opened, the steps hissed down, and the copilot could be seen in the opening.

Kulac left the car alone, jogged the few yards of concrete, and ran up the steps into the sumptuous cabin. He glanced to his left toward the closed door of the flight deck. Two strides took him to the lavatory at the rear. He flung the door open. Empty. Returning to the top of the steps, he beckoned to his employer. The Serb left the car and ran to the steps. When he was inside, the door closed, locking them in to comfort and safety.

Outside, two men do

The second man stood way out front where the pilot could see him, a neon-lit bar in each hand. He guided the Hawker clear of the hangars and out to the edge of the apron.

Captain Stepanovic lined her up, tested the brakes one last time, released them, and powered both throttles.

The Hawker began to roll, faster and faster. To one side, miles away, the floodlights around the mansion flickered out, adding to the chaos. The nose lifted toward the sea and the north. To the left, the escarpment raced by. The twinjet eased off the tarmac, the faint rumbling stopped, the cliffedge villas went under the nose, and she was out over the moonlit sea.

Captain Stepanovic brought up his undercarriage, handed over to the Frenchman, and began to work out the flight plan and track for a first fuel stop in the Azores. He had flown to the UAE several times, but never at thirty minutes' notice. The Hawker tilted to starboard, moving from her northwest takeoff heading toward northeast, and passed through ten thousand feet.

Like most executive jets, the Hawker 1000 had a small but luxurious lavatory, right at the back, occupying the whole hull from side to side. And like some, the rear wall was a movable partition giving access to an even smaller cubbyhole for light luggage. Kulac had checked the lavatory but not the luggage bay.

Five minutes into the flight, the crouching man in the mechanic's coveralls eased the partition aside and stepped into the washroom. He removed the Sig Sauer 9-mm automatic from the toolbox, checked the mechanism yet again, eased off the safety catch, and walked into the main cabin. The two men in the rawhide club chairs facing each other stared at him in silence.