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was a simple matter to shut down the suit, scoop up an armful, and turn the belt rheostat so that his glowing body was once more impervious to bullets and obstacles.
As he had last time, Brashnikov had left a parked car nearby. It was too far to walk to the nearest town, and although there was an added risk in removing his helmet and battery pack after shutting down the vibration suit in order to get behind the wheel and drive off, the risk was more than offset by the convenience.
Now, hurtling through the still California desert night, Rair Brashnikov watched the road ahead as it flat-teried out and became a twisting blacksnake toward freedom. He only hoped that these tiles would be enough to satisfy Major Batenin and that the charge d'affaires would shortly return to Moscow. Brashnikov feared that he had pushed the KGB major too far the last time. The man now had blood in his eyes whenever he saw Brashnikov, although the embassy buzzed with the rumor that Batenin would start at even the slightest sound. Especially ringing telephones.
Rair Brashnikov heard the sound before he realized he was being followed. There were no lights out here in the deserted highway, so the road ahead was a constantly changing splash of headlight glare. Behind him all was blackness and speeding telephone poles.
The sound seemed far away at first. It sounded like the distant wail of a siren. He wondered if it was an alarm being sounded back at Plant Forty-two. But the sound seemed to be drawing closer, as if it were a pursuing police car. But his rearview mirror showed only a wall of night. No pursuing vehicles at all.
Then Brashnikov happened to notice the man running alongside the car. He was all in black, so it was hard to make him out in the dim backglow of his headlights. But it was definitely a man.
Brashnikov looked down at his speedometer. It registered sixty-one miles an hour. That could not be, he
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thought to himself. There was a man keeping pace with his car. If the car was going sixty-one miles an hour, then it stood to reason that the man had to be going sixty-one miles an hour too. Maybe he was on skates.
Brashnikov swerved away from the man and took a look. No, the man was not on skates. He was running.
Then the man drifted-that was what it looked like, despite his speed-up to the driver's window. He knocked. Brashnikov looked up. He could not make out the runner's face. The man's mouth was wide open, yet he didn't seem to pant from exertion, as a man should who was running sixty-one miles an hour. The man's knuckles rapped on the driver's window again.
Brashnikov cracked the window open and the siren sound was suddenly very loud. Holding the wheel steady, he twisted around, but saw no pursuing car. Then Brashnikov realized that the sound was much closer. Almost at his elbow. Almost . . .
With a start he realized that it was coming from the running man. Crazily, insanely, he was making the noise with his mouth, like a child pretending to be a fire truck.
This was proved beyond any doubt when the man said, "Pull over." The siren sound stopped when he gave the order. Then it resumed again, this time louder.
"What is this?" Brashnikov demanded, reaching under the seat cushions carefully, one hand still on the wheel.
"I said, 'Pull over,' " the man repeated. "You're supposed to pull over when you hear sirens. What are you-from Russia or something?" This last sounded like a joke, so Brashnikov didn't reply.
Brashnikov felt the Tokarev pistol's cold butt under the cushions. He hated weapons, but Batenin had insisted he carry one when he was not in the suit. He
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hoped he would not have to kill the man. Rair Brashnikov considered himself a thief, not a murderer.
"Are you militsiya?" Brashnikov asked loudly. "Are you cop? Show me badge. I want proof."
Then he got a good look at the running man's face. The dead flat eyes over high cheekbones. It was the one who had chased him from LCF-Fox. The one who had the old Asian with him. How was this possible?
"Are you gonna stop or do I have to get rough?" the man growled.
That was enough for Rair Brashnikov. He dared not stop the car. There would not be enough time to don the helmet and battery. The man's threat obviously meant that he was armed. Otherwise, how could he stop a speeding Cadillac?
The Tokarev came up in Rair's hand, crossing his chest.
"Please," Brashnikov said. "Go away. I do not wish to shoot you dead."
"Naughty, naughty," the man said, grabbing for the half-open window. "Handguns are illegal in this state."
Brashnikov steeled himself and pulled the trigger.
The Tokarev did not fire. But it went off. It went off Brashnikov's trigger finger as if pulled by a magnet. It left a long streak of blood along Brashnikov's finger where the trigger guard had scraped the skin.
Sucking on his stinging finger, Brashnikov tried to keep the wheel steady with his free hand. The road was beginning to twist and turn. Brashnikov cast frightened glances at the still-running man.
He was busily taking the Tokarev to pieces. The ammo clip came out and was thrown away. Then the slide was yanked back in obviously strong fingers, because it fell away. The long barrel was then unscrewed like a light bulb. Finally the running man broke the handle and firing mechanism into fragments, and he dry-washed his hands clean of the metal filings
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that were all that was left of the well-engineered Russian pistol.
All the while, he kept up the childish police-siren sound.
"Last chance to pull over," he warned.
Brashnikov rolled up the window and floored the gas pedal. He left the man behind when the engine started redlining.
But only for a moment. Because, incredibly, the running man in black began overhauling the Cadillac again, which was now skating up to the ninety-mile-an-hour mark.
The man in black was a red-lit phantom in the rearview mirror. Brashnikov nervously watched him come on. His running motions were hypnotic. It didn't look as if he was really running. The coordinated actions of his arms and legs were slow, floating motions. There was a distinct rhythm to his running. Then, abruptly, he shifted left and drew up alongside the spinning right-rear tire.
Craning to see, Brashnikov saw him pause in mid-step as if to kick out.
Brashnikov sent the Cadillac swerving. The man swerved with it, as if anticipating the car's every nervous move.
That lunatic is trying to kick my tire, Brashnikov thought wildly. For some reason the absurdity of it was lost on him. He hugged the shoulder of the highway, fearing what would happen next.
Rair heard the explosive sound of a blowout and then he was wrestling with the steering wheel as the hard rim of the wheel dug into the flattened rubber. It was incredible. The tire was flat. The Cadillac started to weave and lose speed.
While Rair Brashnikov fought the wheel, his mind racing, a car roared in from the right. It was a small European job, and it sideswiped him viciously, send-
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ing the Cadillac veering raggedly. Brashnikov turned around to see who was driving.
It was the red-haired woman. The one who had tried to knock him down with a helicopter back in North Dakota.
"Pull over," she was shouting. "Pull over, dammit, or I'll run you off the road." She flashed a photo-ID card, which was laughable. Did she think a KGB agent would be impressed by such a thing?
Then the running man with the toes of steel appeared on his right. He was shouting too. Not at him, but at the woman.
"Hey, cut it out," he told her.
"Get out of the way, you fink," she shot back. "I'm going to run this sucker off the road."
"Are you crazy?" the man yelled back. "His car is bigger than yours. You'll be killed. Let me handle this."