Black Market

“Range closing fast, sir,” reported the driver.

“Hang it. They're at the home base,” Patrick Frazier pronounced. His driver immediately stepped on the gas, and the car leaned forward with a thrusting surge of power.

“Either that, or they're switching transportation,” Carroll said.

Carroll's mind cocooned tightly around the thought of Caitlin in serious danger. He was angry and afraid for her. “Let's get in closer. Come on! Come on, let's move it now!” he snapped at the driver.

Less than two miles away, the hood was removed from Caitlin's head; she reeled away as acrid smelling salts were briskly passed under her nose. Her watering eyes rolled backward.

Focus. There were dull-edged silhouettes rather than faces clustered around her. Three of them.

Behind the looming shapes stood excessively bright lamps. Behind the lamps were still more shadowy, unidentifiable figures. Green Band?

She couldn't see who the others were… not yet, anyway.

“Welcome back among the living. You're a brave one to accept our invitation. Probably a little scared right now. That's natural enough.”

“You do have authority to transfer the agreed-upon sum of money? You have the necessary bank codes, Ms. Dillon?”

Caitlin nodded. Her neck was stiff, her throat dry and itchy. When she spoke her voice sounded hollow and lifeless to her, the words clumsily formed.

“Would you mind showing me… some of the stolen securities? I need some reassurance as well. I need to see what we're getting in the exchange.”

“You'll be able to estimate the true value by yourself, aye? And you can tell counterfeit from the genuine article? You've that finely trained an eye?”

“Touch is more important than the eye,” Caitlin said calmly, hiding any anger she felt. “I can tell a great deal by touching the securities. Enough to release the money in Geneva. Please? May I examine them?”

They finally brought her the “sample” stock certificates and bonds. She held in a tiny gasp of amazement. The look of the securities was certainly authentic. She quickly read off the top names: IBM, General Motors, AT &T, Digital, Monsanto.

She played with the outrageous numbers in her mind. It was several thousand times the amount of the great train robbery. And who knew how much of the total stolen amount this was? What was coming still?

“You can touch the documents all you like, darling. They're real enough. We wouldn't bring you all the way here for nothing. Just to chat and admire your fine all-American boobies.”

The black Bentley sedan Carroll rode in barely slowed as it squeezed around a crumbling white brick wall in the i

Suddenly a flatbed was in the same narrow, twisting lane as the Bentley. The truck's engine roared and its horn blared loudly.

A blast of gunfire erupted from the cab of the onrushing truck. Spits of gunfire came from the flat tenement rooftops to the right of the thread-needle roadway.

“Ambush!” Inspector Patrick Frazier grunted. He slumped back against the door as a jagged black hole appeared at the center of his forehead.

Carroll opened the door quickly and followed the driver of the Bentley out. Then he lay pressed tightly against the side of the car. He looked up, staring at Patrick Frazier's wound through the open Bentley doorway. The MI6 inspector was dead, his eyes registering a final glassy surprise.

Carroll angrily swung his gun barrel in the direction of the flatbed. Without any accompanying sound, the weapon opened rapid fire. Gaping bullet holes appeared everywhere on the truck's already mottled surface.

One of the Irish gunsels, astonished because there had been no gun sound, blew back, away from the faded red hood of the truck. Blood spurted from his black-bearded face and throat. And then the body rolled and rolled across the road like a barrel.

Carroll's machine pistol had been developed and perfected by the Israeli army in 1981. It fired automatically; up to two hundred and fifty rounds in six seconds. The bullets were attracted by body heat. “Silent death,” the Israelis and their enemies called it.

A stout redheaded man's forehead was angrily stitched straight across with bullet holes. The man performed a brief two-step, then spun off a steep-shingled rooftop. He plummeted onto the street with a hollow, crunching sound.

Carroll was aware of movement on each side of him.

Crowds, mostly women and children, were streaming out of crumbling, low-slung tenement buildings. They mobbed forward instead of hiding in the safer shadows. They had deep red faces filled with anger.

The two remaining gunmen from the truck immediately dodged back among the women in their plaid bathrobes and tattered men's jackets. They crouched among the dirty-faced children, many of whom were still in their pajamas, dragged out of the i

Carroll clicked the machine gun off automatic so it wouldn't fire into the converging crowds.

“British spies!” the Irish people had suddenly begun to jeer, protecting their revolutionary soldiers, some of whom were immediate family members, some less close relatives and friends.

“Damn British spies! Damn you British!”

“Ga home, damn Brits!”

Carroll cautiously ran forward, anyway. He threw himself directly into the fierce, snarling faces, the threatening, murderous shouts. His machine pistol jutted out, the ugly black snout just menacing enough to keep them off him. Who was the real terrorist here? his mind rambled.

“Big man with yer gun,” someone taunted.

“Fookin' coward with your gun. Dirty Brit turd! Filthy Brit bastard!”

Carroll almost didn't hear the angry shouts. He had only one thought-follow the continuing radar blips. Find Caitlin.

Caitlin covered her head with both arms. She was trying desperately to squirm and struggle away from the IRA men. The air in the tenement room was heavy, impossible for her to breathe.

“You filthy whore, you! Whore! You filthy swine!” the head man screeched at the top of his voice, inches from Caitlin's face. A contact radio was crackling nearby, blaring the latest street reports into the IRA hideout.

“It's a trap. Infuckingsane. She's carryin' some kind of signal, Dermot! Police cars, damn Brit soldiers, are swarming the street out there. Soldiers're everywhere!”

It was the most horrifying, helpless moment Caitlin could ever have imagined. She knew what they were going to do to her. She knew instinctively she was going to be shot, murdered in seconds. She wondered when that moment of resigned calm would come, that transcendental moment you were supposed to experience when you understood you were going to die.

The IRA group leader continued to scream; his black masked face was terribly close to hers. “You bloody knew! You dirty bitch.”

“No, I didn't know. Please. I don't understand.”

The Irish terrorist suddenly lunged forward, propelling himself out of the blinding white floodlights. He ripped off his mask. She saw a dirty, reddish blond beard, black holes for eyes. She saw the gaping mouth of a Russian SKS assault rifle…

Tears flooded her eyes. She tried to tell the terrorist not to fire, to stop, please stop. Her senses were overwhelmed with horrifying impressions. She wondered if this was the way it was going to be, one burst of crazy clarity and then death, that last solitary moment.

There were shrill police sirens and ambulances and gunfire outside; the air was pierced with the maddening noises. Through her tears she watched the door of the apartment burst open. Somebody she'd never seen before stood poised with a drawn pistol-

A deafening volley of automatic gunfire aimed at Caitlin's face. Oh, no! Oh, God, no-