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He went up to their room. Roberta had been asleep, but she woke up when he came in.

"You "re back," she sighed sleepily, and she came into his arms.

He kissed her neck, and she moaned deep in her throat as she moved even closer. "Nick?" she said.

He pushed her back, then kissed the nipples of her breasts, her flat stomach, and soon they were making love, her body soft and yielding, while at the same moment one part of his mind was thinking about the night to come.

It was going to be difficult to get close enough to plant the plastique. Besides the fence, which he was reasonably certain was alarmed, there wasn't a hell of a lot of cover out there. A few rocks here and there, but no tall grass or trees or anything of that sort.

He didn't think there was any way around their personnel security. He did not think he'd be able to get in through the front gate. Not this time. No… it would have to be over or through the fence. Down the hill. Plant the charges. And then get the hell out.

* * *

By that night, when for the second time in twenty-four hours they had driven up the dry creek bed toward the rim overlooking the installation, Carter was ready to move. He had a debt to pay for the way Ziegler had treated them, and he meant to return it tonight.

He parked the car well down from the lip of the rim after he had turned it around. He was not planning on coming out the same way he got in. Once he breached the fence, the alarms would sound, and the clock would begin ticking. He'd not have a lot of time to get down to the reactor site, plant the charges, and then get clear.

The one plus point, however, was that while he was making a retreat in the opposite direction, the perimeter security people would be concentrating on his entry point.

He shut off the car and turned to Roberta. "I want you to return to the hotel. If I'm not back by morning, I want you to get in contact with your boss. Tell him what happened. He'll contact mine."

She had argued earlier that she had wanted to go with him. But he had told her no. She tried again.

"I told you I wanted to be a part of it," she said.

"And I told you that when I went after Ziegler you'd be able to help. Right now I'm just going to put a damper on his reactor, that's all. He'll come later."

"Watch yourself, Nick. I want there to be a later."

Carter smiled, kissed her, then got out of the car. He opened the trunk and pulled out the pack containing the plastique and detonators, as well as the large wire cutters.

He shouldered the pack, then slammed the trunk, and scrambled up the hill where Roberta was crouched behind a rock.

"He just went by," she whispered.

"Wish me luck," he said, and kissed her again.

"Luck," Roberta said as he scrambled away from the rock and down the hundred yards to the fence.

He could hear the sounds of construction machinery below in the valley, but nothing else. Crouching next to the fence, he raised the wire cutters, hesitated for just a moment, then cut the first strand.

There were no alarms, no sparks or lights, nothing. But as he cut strand after strand of the wire mesh fence, he was certain that somewhere within the huge compound a light was flashing, pinpointing exactly where the fence had been penetrated.

When he had the hole large enough, he tossed the wire cutters back up the hill, waved to Roberta, then ducked through the hole and took off in a crouching run down the hill.

"Good luck." he heard her call from behind, and then he was out of earshot as he hurried toward the first line of buildings that made up the perimeter of the vast complex.

* * *

Roberta watched until he was out of sight, then walked back over the crest of the hill to where the car was parked. She stripped off her jumpsuit. Underneath she wore a summer dress with a V-neck that accentuated the deep milky white of her cleavage. She smoothed the wrinkles from the dress with her hands, and from beneath the seat she pulled out a pair of high-heeled shoes. She untied the sneakers she was wearing and slipped on the dressy sandals. Her makeup was in her handbag, which she dug out and applied in the rearview mirror. When she felt she was ready, she started the car and drove back to the main road, but instead of turning left into town, she went right, toward the checkpoint into the complex.

Halfway there she stopped the car, shut off the engine, got out, and raised the hood. She reached in and gently pulled two wires from their sockets in the distributor cap. Then she closed the hood and got back behind the wheel. When she got the car started again, the engine was sputtering and bucking.

By the time she reached the gate, the car was backfiring every tenth or twelfth revolution, and clouds of unburned gasoline were being expelled from the exhaust. She let it bang a final time, cut the engine, and let it coast to within twenty-five yards of the guardhouse.

She tried the starter twice to no avail. She was about to try it a third time when she heard a soft tapping at the window.

She looked up. A guard was there, an automatic slung over his shoulder. She rolled down the window. "Where is this?" she asked in English.

"Is something wrong with your car, miss?" the guard asked, his German accent strong in his halting English.

"It keeps stalling. I turned off the main road. I saw the lights. I need help."

This is a government installation," the man said, his eyes straying to her breasts.

"Perhaps you could help me," she said. "I know nothing about cars."

He smiled and licked his lips.

"I would be ever so grateful," she purred.

He went around to the front of the car. She pulled the hood release, then got out. A second guard had come from the gate. She could see no others in the small guardhouse.

"Can you see what the problem is?" she asked, coming around to the front. She pulled her Beretta nine-shot automatic from her purse.

"There are wires loose…" the guard started to say.

Roberta turned around and shot the guard by the gate two times. When he started to go down she turned back. As the guard under the hood was scrambling for the rifle over his shoulder, she shot him once through the side of the head.

He fell forward onto the engine, then turned and slumped to the pavement, hanging at an absurd angle from his rifle strap which had become tangled in the bumper.

Working quickly, Roberta unhooked him, then dragged him by the cuffs onto the road shoulder and into the rocky field beyond. She hurried back to the gate and dragged the second guard out into the field. She took their weapons, returned to the car, reattached the spark plug wires, then drove several hundred feet off the road into the darkness.

The guards had left the gate ajar. She slipped through the opening with a delicious, coppery taste of fear at the back of her throat. But her purse swung as she walked through, hiding the steel mesh of the gate. Inside the guardhouse a light began to flash.

Eleven

A siren began wailing into the night air when Carter was less than a hundred feet from the massive reactor control rod support column, and he had to duck behind a pile of concrete forms.

Men, momentarily confused, scrambled through the work area in response to the alarm. But Carter had no doubts that they would begin a systematic search for the intruder at any minute. He didn't have a hell of a lot of time now to do what he had come for.

One of the construction workers raced by him, and Carter reached out, tripping the man. Before the other had a chance to react, Carter was on him, knocking him unconscious.

Quickly he dressed in the man's dark coveralls and hard hat, then jumped up and started toward the control rod base at the same moment that a half-dozen workmen and a couple of armed guards headed his way.