Текст книги "Dragon"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 31 страниц)

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 to Stacy.

“I have my katana.” Kamatori’s hand raised and touched the hilt of his native Japanese ancestral sword that rested in the sheath that stuck out behind his back. The sixty-one-centimeter blade was forged from an elastic magnetic iron combined with a hard steel edge. “And I also carry a wakizashi.” He slipped a knife about twenty-four centimeters in length from a scabbard inside his sash, displaying its blade before resheathing it.

Pitt stepped back toward the doorway leading to Kamatori’s antique arsenal and yanked the sword from the floor. “Not exactly Excalibur maybe, but it beats swinging a pillow.”

The sword that Pitt had taken from a wall of Kamatori’s study was a nineteenth-century Italian dueling saber with a blade ninety centimeters from hilt to tip. It was heavier than the modern fencing saber Pitt had used during his days at the Air Force Academy and not as flexible, but in the hand of a skilled fencer it could be used with great effect.

Pitt had no illusions of what he was plunging into. He didn’t doubt for an instant that Kamatori was a practicing expert at the Japanese sword sport of kenjutsu, while he hadn’t swung a blade in a practice match for over two years. But if he could just stay alive while Stacy somehow freed Mancuso and Weatherhill, or distracted Kamatori so Pitt might gain an advantage, there was a slim chance they could still escape the island.

“You dare to challenge me with that?” Kamatori sneered.

“Why not?” Pitt shrugged. “In truth samurai warriors were little more than overblown toads. I figure you were bred from the same slime pond.”

Kamatori brushed off the insult. “So you’re to wear a halo and play Sir Galahad against my black knight.”

“Actually I had Errol Flynn against Basil Rathbone more in mind.”

Kamatori closed his eyes and in an unexpected movement sank to his knees and went into a meditating trance. He became immersed in the art of kiai, an inner force or power attributed with accomplishing miracles, especially among the samurai class. Mentally, long practice in uniting the soul and conscious mind and bringing them into a kind of divine realm supposedly raises the practitioner to a subconscious level that aids him in performing superhuman feats in the martial arts. Physically, it involved the art of deep and prolonged breathing, the reasoning being the man who has a full load of air in the lungs has it all over the opponent who has exhaled.

Pitt sensed a quick attack and flexed his legs and body in the on-guard position.

Nearly two full minutes passed, and then suddenly, with lightninglike speed, Kamatori leaped to his feet and pulled his katana from its scabbard with both hands in a long sweeping motion. But instead of losing a microsecond by lifting the blade over his head for a downward stroke, he continued the motion in an upward diagonal cut in an attempt to slash Pitt open from the hip to the shoulder.

Pitt anticipated the move and narrowly parried the wicked slice, then made a quick thrust, penetrating Kamatori’s thigh before jumping backward to avoid his opponent’s next savage attack.

The tactics of kenjutsu and Olympic saber were wildly different. It was as if a basketball player was pitted against a football halfback. Traditional fencing had linear movements with thrusting strokes, while kenjutsu had no limitations, the katana wielder wading in to cut down his opponent in a slashing assault. But they both relied on technique, speed, and the element of surprise.

Kamatori moved with catlike agility, knowing that one good cut against Pitt’s flesh would quickly end the contest. He moved rapidly from side to side, uttering guttural shouts to throw Pitt off balance. He rushed fiercely, his two-handed strokes beating aside Pitt’s thrusts with relative ease. The wound in his thigh went seemingly unnoticed and caused no obstacle to his nimble reactions.

Kamatori’s two-handed katana strokes cut the air slightly faster and carried more power than the saber in Pitt’s single hand. But in the hands of a skilled fencer, the old dueling blade could reverse angle a fraction more quickly. It was also nearly thirty centimeters longer, a benefit Pitt used to keep Kamatori’s slashing attack out of range of a mortal injury. The saber combined the point with the stroke, while the katana was all slash and cut.

Kamatori also had the advantage of experience and constant practice with his blade. Pitt was rusty, but he was ten years younger than the kenjutsu expert and, except for the loss of blood, was in top physical condition.

Stacy and the others were spellbound by the spectacular display of leaping, thrusting, and running attacks as the blades glinted like strobe lights and clattered as their edges struck. Occasionally Kamatori broke off the attack and retreated, altering his position to stay between Stacy, Mancuso, and Weatherhill to prevent her from freeing them, and to satisfy himself that she wasn’t attempting to attack him from the rear or flank. Then he shouted a guttural curse and resumed the slashing onslaught against the hated American.

Pitt was holding his own, lunging when an opening presented itself, parrying the explosive power of Kamatori’s strokes, and evading the incredible ferocity of the attacks. He tried to work Stacy clear, but his opponent was too shrewd and shut down every opportunity. Though Stacy was an expert at judo, Kamatori would have cut her down before she came within two meters of him.

Pitt fought hard and silently, while Kamatori came on savagely, yelling with every stroke, slowly forcing Pitt to retreat across the room. The Japanese smiled faintly as a fierce swipe grazed Pitt’s extended sword arm and drew a thin line of blood.

The sheer force of Kamatori’s assault kept Pitt on the defensive warding off the chopping blows. Kamatori swept from side to side, attempting to fight in a circle.

Pitt easily saw through the ploy and steadily fell back a step at a time, then suddenly lunged, relying on his dexterous use of the point and controlled fencing style to keep alive and frustrate Kamatori’s timing.

One thrust caught Kamatori in the forearm but didn’t slow down the kenjutsu master for an instant. Lost in the kiai, striking when he thought Pitt exhaled his breath, he felt no pain, nor seemingly noticed when Pitt’s saber point pierced his flesh. He hurtled back and came inexorably after Pitt, swishing his kutana in a blur of whirling steel with short brutal back-and-forth strokes almost faster than the eye.

Pitt was tiring, his arm felt leaden, like a prizefighter’s after the fourteenth round of a toe-to-toe slugging match. His breath was coming faster now, and he could feel the increased pounding of his heart.

The ancient saber was showing signs of wear too. Its edge was no match for the fine steel of the Japanese katana. The tarnished old blade was deeply nicked in fifty places, and Pitt knew that one solid blow on the flat side could very well break it in two.

Kamatori amazingly showed no hint of weariness. His eyes seemed glazed with bloodlust, and the power behind his strokes was as strong now as at the beginning of the duel. It was only a matter of another minute or two before he would wear Pitt down and cut away his life with the proud sword of Japan.

Pitt leaped backward for a quick breather to take stock as Kamatori paused to catch Stacy’s movements out of the corner of his eye. She stood suspiciously still with her hands behind her back. The Japanese sensed something and moved toward her, but Pitt advanced again, stretching forward on one knee with a rapid thrust that caught the katana and slid down the hilt, the saber’s tip just fanning the knuckles of Kamatori’s forward hand.

Pitt suddenly changed tactics and pressed forward, seeing an opportunity that he had missed. Unlike the shorter hilt of the old dueling saber, with its shell enclosing the hand, Kamatori’s katana had only a small round guard at the base of the longer hilt. Pitt began aiming his thrusts, using a wrist-snapping circular motion. Feinting toward his assailant’s midsection during a lunge, Pitt flicked the tip of the blade to the left and caught Kamatori’s hand during a vicious upswing, slicing fingers to the bone.

Incredibly, Kamatori simply cursed in Japanese and came on again, blood spraying whenever he whipped his sword. If he felt the cold grip of defeat in his gut, he didn’t show it. Immune to pain and injury by his immersion into his kiai, he resumed the attack like a madman.

Then his head snapped back and to one side as a steel object struck him in the right eye. With unerring aim, Stacy had thrown the lock that had fastened her chains. Pitt snatched the moment and lunged, ramming the point of his saber into his opponent’s rib cage and puncturing a lung.

Kamatori faltered momentarily and insanely continued to fight. He moved against Pitt, shouting with each stroke as blood began to foam from his mouth. But his speed and power were diminished, and Pitt had no problem fending off the weakened cuts.

Pitt’s next thrust laid open Kamatori’s right biceps. Only then did the highly burnished steel of the katana waver and droop.

Pitt stepped in and swung the saber as hard as his strength would allow, knocking the katana free of Kamatori’s hand. The blade clattered to the floor, and Stacy snapped it up.

He kept the saber pointed at Kamatori and stared at him. “You lose,” Pitt said with controlled courtesy.

It was not in Kamatori’s samurai bones to acknowledge surrender so long as he still stood on his feet. His face underwent a curious change. The mask of hatred and ferocity melted away and his eyes assumed an inward look.

He said, “A samurai takes no honor in defeat. You can cut out a dragon’s tooth, but he grows a thousand more.” Then he snatched the long knife from its sheath and leaped at Pitt.

Pitt, though weak and panting for breath, easily stepped aside and parried the slashing knife. He swung the faithful old saber for the last time and severed Kamatori’s hand at the wrist.

Shock flooded Kamatori’s face, the shock of disbelief, then pain, then the full realization that for the first time in his life he had been subdued by an opponent and was going to die. He stood and glowered at Pitt, his dark eyes filled with uncontrolled rage, the empty wrist hanging by his side, blood streaming to the floor.

“I have dishonored my ancestors. You will please allow me to save face by committing seppuku.”

Pitt’s eyes half closed in curiosity. He looked at Mancuso.

“Seppuku?”

“The accepted and more stylish Japanese term for what we crudely call hara-kiri, which actually translates as belly cutting. He wants you to let him have a ‘happy dispatch.’ “

“I see,” Pitt said, a tired but maddened understanding in his voice. “I see indeed, but it’s not going to happen. He’s not going to get his way. Not with his own hand. Not after all the people he’s murdered in cold blood.”

“My dishonor at having been defeated by a foreigner must be expunged by offering up my life,” Kamatori muttered through clenched teeth, the mesmeric force of kiai quickly fading.

“His friends and family will rejoice,” explained Mancuso. “Honor to him is everything. He considers dying by his own hand beautiful and looks forward to it.”

“God, this is sickening,” murmured Stacy disgustedly as she stared at Kamatori’s hand on the floor. “Tie and gag him. Let’s finish our job and get out of here.”

“You’re going to die, but not as you hope,” said Pitt, staring at the defiant face darkened in hate, the lips drawn back like a dog baring its teeth. But Pitt caught a slight look of fear in the dark eyes, not a fear of dying, but a fear of not joining his ancestors in the prescribed manner of honored tradition.

Before anyone knew what Pitt was about to do, he grabbed Kamatori by the good arm and dragged the samurai into the study containing the antique arms and the gruesome collection of mounted human heads. Carefully, as if he was aligning a painting, he positioned Kamatori and rammed the saber blade through the lower groin, pinning him upright to the wall beneath the heads of his victims.

Kamatori’s eyes were filled with unbelief and the fear of a miserable and shameful end. The pain was there too.

Pitt knew he was looking at a near corpse and got in the last word before the eyes went sightless in death.

“No divine passing for a killer of the helpless. Join your prey and be damned.”

53

PITT REMOVED A Viking battle-axe from its brackets on a wall and returned to the video monitor room. Stacy had already picked the locks on the chains confining Giordino and Mancuso and was working to free Weatherhill.

“What did you do with Kamatori?” Giordino asked, peering curiously around Pitt’s shoulder into the trophy room.

“Mounted him with the rest of his collection.” He handed the axe to Giordino. “Break up the robots so they can’t be repaired anytime soon.”

“Break up McGoon?”

“And McGurk.”

Giordino looked pained, but he took the ax and smashed it into McGoon. “I feel like Dorothy trashing the Tin Man from Oz.”

Mancuso shook Pitt’s hand. “You saved our asses. Thank you.”

“A nice bit of swordplay,” said Weatherhill. “Where’d you learn it?”

“That will have to wait,” Pitt said impatiently. “What’s Penner’s grandiose scheme for our rescue?”

“You don’t know?”

“Penner didn’t deem us worthy of his confidence.”

Mancuso looked at him and shook his head. “There is no plan for a rescue mission,” he said with an embarrassed expression. “Originally we were to be evacuated by submarine, but Penner ruled that out as too risky for the sub and its crew after reviewing a satellite photo of Suma’s sea defenses. Stacy, Tim, and I were to make our way back through the tunnel to Edo City and escape to our embassy in Tokyo.”

Pitt nodded at Giordino. “And the two of us?”

“The State Department was alerted to negotiate with Suma and the Japanese government for your release.”

“The State Department?” Giordino moaned between chops. “I’d sooner be represented by Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”

“Jordan and Kern didn’t take into account Suma and Kamatori’s nasty dispositions,” said Mancuso cynically.

Pitt’s mouth tightened in a hard bitter line. “You people are the experts. What’s the next move?”

“Finish the job as planned and hot-foot it through the tunnel,” answered Weatherhill as Stacy opened the lock and his chains fell away.

“You still aim to destroy the Dragon Center?”

“Not completely, but we can put a dent in it.”

“With what?” inquired Giordino. “A homemade magnet and an axe?”

“No sweat,” Weatherhill replied airily, massaging his wrists. “Suma’s security forces may have taken our explosives kit during our capture and subsequent search, but we still have enough for a minor bang.” He sat down and pulled off his shoes, prying off the soles and incredibly kneading them into a ball. “C-Eight plastic,” he said proudly. “The very latest in explosives for the discriminating spook.”

“And the detonators are in the heels,” muttered Pitt.

“How’d you know?”

“Positive thinking.”

“Let’s move out,” said Mancuso. “The robot’s controllers and Kamatori’s human pals will wonder why his private hunt has been shut down and come running to investigate.”

Stacy stepped to the door leading outside Kamatori’s personal quarters, opened it slightly, and peered around the garden outside. “Our first hurdle is to find the building with the elevator to the underground center. We were led up here from our cells blindfolded and didn’t get a feel for its exact location.”

“I’ll lead you to it,” said Pitt.

“You know the location?”

“I should. I rode it down to the hospital.”

“Your magnet won’t be of much help if we run into a squad of robots,” Mancuso said grimly.

“Then we’ll have to expand our bag of tricks,” said Pitt. He moved over beside Stacy and looked through the cracked door. “There’s a garden hose just under that bush to your left. See it?”

Stacy nodded. “Beside the terrace.”

He gestured at the katana she still held in her hand. “Sneak out and slice off a few feet.”

She stared at him quizzically. “May I ask why?”

“Cut up the hose in short lengths, rub one against a piece of silk, and you strip out the negative electrons,” Pitt explained. “Then touch the end of the hose against a robot’s integrated circuits, making the electrons jump and destroy the delicate components.”

“An electrostatic discharge,” murmured Weatherhill thoughtfully. “Is that it?”

Pitt nodded. “You could do the same thing by rubbing a cat or dragging your feet across a carpet.”

“You’d make a good high school physics teacher.”

“What about the silk?” asked Giordino.

“Kamatori’s kimono,” Weatherhill said over his shoulder as he hurried into the trophy room.

Pitt turned to Mancuso. “Where do you intend to set off your firecrackers where they’ll do the most damage?”

“We don’t have enough C-Eight to do a permanent job, but if we can place it near a power supply, we can set back their schedule for a few days, maybe weeks.”

Stacy returned with a three-meter section of garden hose. “How do you want it sliced?”

“Divide it into four parts,” Pitt answered. “One for each of you. I’ll carry the magnet as a backup.”

Weatherhill came back from the trophy room carrying torn shreds of Kamatori’s silk kimono, some showing bloodstains, and began passing them out. He smiled at Pitt. “Your placement of our samurai friend made him a most appropriate piece of wall decor.”

“There is no sculpture,” Pitt said pontifically, “that can take the place of an original.”

“I don’t want to be within a thousand kilometers when Hideki Suma sees what you’ve done to his best friend.” Giordino laughed, throwing the broken remains of the two roboguards into a pile in a corner of the room.

“Yes,” Pitt said indifferently, “but that’s what he gets for pissing off the dark side of the fence.”

Loren, her face still and angered, observed in mounting shock the awesome technical and financial power behind Suma’s empire as he led her and Diaz on a tour through a complex that was far more vast than she could ever imagine. There was much more to it than a control center to send, prime, and detonate signals to a worldwide array of nuclear bombs. The seemingly unending levels and corridors also contained countless laboratories, vast engineering and electronic experimental units, a fusion research facility, and a nuclear reactor plant incorporating designs still on the drawing boards of the Western industrialized countries.

Suma said proudly, “My primary structural engineering and administration offices and scientific think tank are housed in Edo City. But here, safe and secure under Soseki Island, is the core of my research and development.”

He ushered them into a lab and pointed out a large open vat of crude oil. “You can’t see them, but eating away at the oil are second-generation genetically engineered microbes that actually digest the petroleum and multiply, launching a chain reaction and destroying the oil molecules. The residue can then be dissolved by water.”

“That could prove a boon for the cleanup of oil spills,” commented Diaz.

“One useful purpose,” said Suma. “Another is to deplete a hostile country’s oil reserves.”

Loren looked at him in disbelief. “Why cause such chaos? For what gain?”

“In time, Japan will be almost totally independent of oil. Our total generating power will be nuclear. Our new technology in fuel cells and solar energy will soon be incorporated in our automobiles, replacing the gasoline engine. Deplete the world’s reserves with our oil-eating microbes, and eventually all international transportation—automobiles, trucks, and aircraft—grinds to a halt.”

“Unless replaced by Japanese products,” Diaz stated coldly.

“A lifetime,” Loren said, becoming skeptical. “It would take a lifetime to dry up the billion-gallon oil reserve stored in our underground salt mines.”

Suma smiled patiently. “The microbes could totally deplete United States strategic oil reserves in less than nine months.”

Loren shook her head, unable to absorb the horrible consequences of all she’d been exposed to in the past few hours. She could not conceive of one man causing such a chaotic upheaval. She also could not accept the awful possibility that Pitt might already be dead.

“Why are you showing us all this?” she asked in a whisper. “Why aren’t you keeping it a secret?”

“So you can tell your President and fellow congressmen that the United States and Japan are no longer on equal terms. We now have an unbeatable lead, and your government must accept our demands accordingly.” Suma paused and stared at her. “As to generously giving away secrets, you and Senator Diaz are not scientists or engineers. You can only describe what you’ve seen in vague layman terms. I have shown you no scientific data but merely an overall view of my projects. You will take home nothing that can prove useful in copying our technical superiority.”

“When will you allow Congresswoman Smith and I to leave for Washington?” asked Diaz.

Suma looked at his watch. “Very soon. As a matter of fact, you will be airlifted to my private airfield at Edo City within the hour. From there, one of my executive jets will fly you home.”

“Once the President hears of your madness,” Diaz snapped, “he’ll order the military to blow this place to dust.”

Suma gave vent to a confident sigh and smiled. “He’s too late. My engineers and robotic workers are ahead of schedule. You did not know, could not have known, the Kaiten Project was completed a few minutes after we began the tour.”

“It’s operational?” Loren spoke in a shocked whisper.

Suma nodded. “Should your President be foolish enough to launch an attack on the Dragon Center, my detection systems will alert me in ample time to signal the robots to deploy and detonate the bomb cars.” He hesitated only long enough to flash a hideous grin. “As Buson, a Japanese poet, once wrote, ‘With his hat blown off/the stiff-necked scarecrow/stands there quite discomfited.’

“The President is the scarecrow, and he stands stymied because his time is gone.”

54

LIVELY, BUT NOT HURRIEDLY, Pitt led them into the building of the retreat that housed the elevator. He walked in the open while the others dodged from cover to cover behind him. He met no humans but was halted by a robotic security guard at the elevator entrance.

This one was programmed to speak only in Japanese, but Pitt had no trouble in deciphering the menacing tone and the weapon pointing at his forehead. He raised his hands in front of him with the palms facing forward and slowly moved closer, shielding the others from its video receiver and detection sensors.

Weatherhill and Mancuso stealthily closed in from the flanks and jabbed their statically charged hoses against the box containing the integrated circuits. The armed robot froze as if in suspended animation.

“Most efficient,” Weatherhill observed, recharging his length of hose by rubbing it vigorously against the silk.

“Think he tipped off his supervisory control?” Stacy wondered.

“Probably not,” Pitt replied. “His sensory capability was slow in deciding whether I was a threat or simply an unprogrammed member of the project.”

Once inside the deserted elevator, Weatherhill opted for the fourth level. “Six opens onto the main floor of the control center,” he recalled. “Better to take our chances and exit on a lower level.”

“The hospital and service units are on four,” Pitt briefed him.

“What about security?”

“I saw no sign of guards or video monitors.”

“Suma’s outside defenses are so tight he doesn’t have to concern himself with interior security,” said Stacy.

Weatherhill agreed. “A rogue robot is the least of his problems.”

They tensed as the elevator arrived and the doors slid open. Fortunately it was empty. They entered, but Pitt hung back, head tilted as if listening to a distant sound. Then he was inside, pressing the button for the fourth level. A few seconds later they stepped out into a vacant corridor.

They moved quickly, silently, following Pitt. He stopped outside the hospital and paused at the door.

“Why are you stopping here?” Weatherhill asked softly.

“We’ll never find our way around this complex without a map or a guide,” Pitt murmured. “Follow me inside.” He pushed the door button and kicked it back against its stops.

Startled, the nurse-receptionist looked up in surprise at seeing Pitt burst through the doorway. She was not the same nurse who aided Dr. Nogami during Pitt’s earlier visit. This one was as ugly and ruggedly constructed as a road grader. Even as she recovered, her arm snapped out toward an alarm button on an intercom communications unit. Her finger was a centimeter away when Pitt’s flattened palm struck her violently on the chin, catapulting her in a backward somersault onto the floor unconscious.

Dr. Nogami heard the commotion and rushed from his office, stopping abruptly and staring at Pitt and the MAIT team as they flooded through the door before pushing it closed. Oddly, the expression on his face was one of curious amusement rather than shock.

“Sorry for intruding, Doc, Pitt said, “but we need directions.”

Nogami gazed down at his nurse who was lying on the floor out cold. “You certainly have a way with women.”

“She was about to set off an alarm,” Pitt said apologetically.

“Lucky you caught her by surprise. Nurse Oba knows karate like I know medicine.” Only then did Nogami take a few seconds to study the motley group of people standing around the prostrate nurse. He shook his head almost sadly. “So you’re the finest MAIT team the U.S. can field. You sure don’t look it. Where in hell did Ray Jordan dig you people up?”