Rikki finished him with a well-placed reverse thrust into the stud’s heart.
The Knight gurgled, spitting up blood and bile, and tumbled to the carpet.
Lex emerged from hiding. She had seen the entire encounter by looking around the lower corner of the couch.
“We must hurry to Blade,” Rikki said.
Lex nodded. “I hope you show me how to do that someday.”
Rikki wiped his katana on the second stud’s black vest. “Considerable practice is required.”
“It’d be worth it,” Lex said. “If I get half as good as you, no one would dare mess with me again.”
“Take me to Grotto,” Rikki directed her.
“What am I going to do about these knives?” Lex asked, referring to the Bowies. “I’m liable to poke myself before we get there.”
Rikki debated a moment. Both Bowies and the Commando were quite an armful. When the Knights had stripped Blade’s weapons, they’d merely removed the Bowies from their sheaths. So Lex was compelled to carry the Bowies with their keen blades exposed.
“I’ll take them,” Rikki volunteered. He carefully aligned each knife under his belt, insuring the belt supported each knife by its guard, and slanted their points away from his privates.
“That doesn’t look too safe,” Lex remarked, worried by the proximity of the knives to his groin.
“Just hope I don’t sneeze,” Rikki joked. “Come on.”
They left Terza’s room on the double, Rikki leading until they had descended the stairs to the bottom floor. Lex took over, cradling the Commando in her arms, making for the pit room where Grotto was fed.
The hallways were a virtual maze, and Rikki chafed at the delay.
“Isn’t there a shortcut?” he asked at one point.
Lex stopped. “I’m sticking to the halls we don’t use too often. We might avoid the Knights this way.”
Rikki glanced at the Commando. “Have you checked it to see if it’s loaded?”
“Damn! Never thought of it!” Lex admitted. She fiddled with the magazine release until the magazine popped free. She held it in her left hand and studied it by the light of a nearby lantern. “The clip is full,” she announced, “but I don’t have a spare.”
“Blade usually carries those in his pockets,” Rikki informed her.
Lex replaced the magazine in the Commando.
“Will we be there soon?” Rikki asked.
“Pretty soon,” Lex replied.
The sound of many voices in turmoil abruptly came from behind them.
“What’s that?” Lex whispered.
The turmoil was growing louder.
Lex motioned for Rikki to follow. They raced along the passage until they reached a branch, and she took a right.
The voices weren’t far off.
Rikki drew Lex into the darkest shadows.
“—tell you I saw them!” a woman was bellowing angrily.
“Sure you did,” another woman responded.
“But I did!” insisted the first. “About two hundred yards back. I saw them pass a junction.”
“Then where the hell are they?” demanded yet a third woman.
“If we haven’t seen them by now,” chimed in a stud, “we’ll never catch them.”
“If they were ever there,” griped one of the women.
“I saw them, damn you!” insisted the first woman.
There were eight of them, five sisters and three studs, and they reached the fork in the tunnels and stopped. None of them ventured into the branch concealing Rikki and Lex.
“So where do we go from here?” inquired one of the sisters.
“I’m tired of looking,” said another. “Why don’t we grab a bite to eat? I’m starving!”
“Will you listen to yourselves?” snapped the fifth woman. “They would hear us coming a mile off.”
“So what do we do?” asked a stud.
“Let’s try this way,” suggested a sister, and entered the right branch.
A whirlwind in black, wielding a scintillating blade, pounced on them from the shadows. In the three seconds they required to react to the onslaught, four of them were dead. A stud whipped his pistol from its holster, but that streaking sword was lanced through his right eye and into his brain before he could fire. The sister responsible for initially glimpsing Rikki and Lex successfully pulled her revolver, but the katana bit into her forehead, slicing off the top of her head, hair and all, and she uttered an uncanny death cry as she fell.
Hidden in the shadows, Lex watched in dazed fascination, dazzled by Rikki’s prowess with the katana. His sinewy body was a twisting, flowing dervish of destruction. To her untrained eye, it seemed as if he executed his movements without conscious deliberation, as if he and the sword were one.
Thirty seconds after they entered the right branch, the eight Leather Knights were dead.
Rikki cleaned his katana on a stud’s pants and rejoined Lex.
Lex stared at him with unconcealed admiration. “I’m beginning to wonder if anyone can kill you,” she said by way of a compliment.
“Anyone can kill me,” Rikki stated. “We all die, sooner or later. It’s the technique for translating our souls from this world to the next.”
Lex wanted to reach out and touch him, to smother his lips with fiery kisses. Instead, she chuckled. “You’re all right, you know that?”
“I do now,” Rikki replied, smiling. Then he turned serious. “We must reach Blade as quickly as possible.”
Lex nodded. “Come on.”
They jogged along the tunnels, sometimes taking a right fork, sometimes a left.
“How far underground are we?” Rikki asked once.
“I don’t know,” Lex responded. “But Grotto’s room is the last one we built.”
“It would be,” Rikki remarked.
After a series of winding hallways, Lex slowed and pointed to a wall ahead. “That’s it.”
“A dead end?” Rikki queried, perplexed.
“Not really,” Lex said. “The door is hidden in the wall. It’s one of our secret retreats in case the Reds ever invade St. Louis.”
Rikki ran to the brick wall.
Lex checked to verify no one was in pursuit, then joined him.
“How do we get in?” Rikki whispered.
Lex groped over the wall, seeking the false brick, the one covering the latch for the door. “It should be here somewhere.”
“I pray nothing has happened to Blade,” Rikki said anxiously.
“I bet he’s okay,” Lex said optimistically.
A tremendous roar shook the wall, emanating from the other side.
“I can’t find the latch!” Lex wailed.
Chapter Eighteen
Hickok crouched in the high grass bordering the former East Potomac Park and surveyed the airstrip. He knew this area had once been the East Potomac Park because he’d stumbled across a faded, weather-beaten sign at the side of Buckeye Drive, a sign replete with a miniature map of the Tidal Basin and the tract east of the Potomac River.
He’d been lucky so far.
Real lucky.
Hickok had been able to keep the helicopter in sight as it flew from the West Potomac Park, over the Jefferson Memorial, and landed at the airstrip. Traveling undetected from the West Potomac Park to the airstrip had been painstaking and arduous. Fortunately, the Jefferson Memorial had been leveled during World War III; all that remained were several shattered columns and the cracked and ruined dome lying on the ground.
Hickok was glad the structure had been razed. Otherwise, he might have encountered large crowds similar to those near the Lincoln Memorial. He silently thanked the Spirit as he crept toward the airstrip, using every available cover.
Once, as he was nearing Buckeye Drive, a squad of soldiers had tramped past his position. They were marching toward the Washington Channel.
Hickok had crossed Buckeye and hidden in the grass, and now he was only 15 feet from the northwestern perimeter of the strip. He parted the grass in front of him for a better look-see.