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pace, while Dobbins sped past them like a black bul­let. He was ahead of all of them.

He checked his rear-view. Not all of them. There was one pair of headlights behind him, going at his pace, no slower, no faster.

Dobbins cursed under his breath. Those Fords had to be built with Maserati engines in them. Well, it was going to take more than a hot engine and a car full of youngsters just barely off the tit to catch him.

"Try and follow this, you suckers!" he shouted as he spun into the inside lane. With one momentous burst of power, he jumped the median strip and headed full speed in the other direction.

"A trick, boys," he roared, coughing with laughter. They must have been asses to think he was going to Bethesda in the first place, Dobbins thought. Who screws in Bethesda, anyway?

Out of his rear-view he watched the green Ford skid and spin out into an uncontrollable donut across four lanes of traffic. It hit two vehicles superficially while siting toward the far side of Connecticut Avenue. Several cars braked behind it, sending them into her­ringbone patterns along the roadway. The green Ford crashed into a guardrail and at last lay still.

Dobbins hooted with delight. It was clear sailing now. He put the car on cruise control at 60 and glided down Connecticut Avenue back toward the city. His thoughts filled with Rhonda. Rhonda, in a transparent pink negligee, with maybe the black garter belt he'd given her for Valentine's Day underneath. Rhonda of the deliciously foul mouth who knew just how to bring his wildest fantasies to life. Rhonda... if Rhonda was awake. Otherwise, he might as well be at home with Hilda. He cut the cruise control and gunned the pedal.

Back in the city, he made his way toward the north-

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east section of town. Traffic was light and he made good time. He didn't notice until he'd reached Six­teenth Avenue that the same headlights had been be­hind him since the crackup on the highway.

Damn it, if it wasn't the Secret Service boys, it was the turd-eating reporters. Although no official word about the assassinations of the secretaries of the Air Force and the Navy had been given, the press boys had noticed the added security around Dobbins and took every opportunity to grili him about it. Ever since the advent of the Secret Service guards, he'd denied all press interviews and eschewed them with a hurried "No comment" when they ran up to him on the street.

Oh, that's all I need, Dobbins thought as he checked the rear-view again. It certainly looked like a tail. The crud-mongers. He could just see the head­lines now: "ARMY HEAD ELUDES SECURITY TO RENDEZVOUS WITH WASHINGTON MISTRESS." And there would be a picture next to it of Rhonda in her flamingo-pink negligee with the black garter belt underneath. Read all about it in the Pentagon Report. Details in Clive R. Dobbins's dishonorable discharge papers.

"Get off my ass, you wang-wavers!" he shouted as he turned into a narrow sidestreet. He slowed down at the entrance to an alley. If it wasn't a tail, the car that had been driving behind him for the past twenty min­utes would pass by harmlessly.

But it didn't. It turned into the same side street with a deliberation that sent a sudden involuntary chill down Dobbins's spine. He entered the alleyway, roll­ing slowly to avoid the stacks of piled-up garbage on either side. Then he turned onto another side street. And after that, another alley.

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The car was still behind him.

Rhonda's plush apartment building was less than two blocks away. If he was going to get his portrait snapped, it sure as hell wasn't going to be in front of that building. He ground the Lincoln to a halt.

Fine. Snap away, boys. Think you're so damned smart. The only picture you're getting of me is going to be right here in this alley, while I give you the news that my lawyer's going to slap a harassment suit against your muckraking paper.

Stick that in your turd-eating notepads.

He got out slowly and walked toward the car behind him with kingly grandeur. They were going to see who's boss around here, by God. The car was a non­descript Chevy, as battered and dented as every other car in Washington. Something was poking out of the driver's window. In the darkness of the alley, Dobbins guessed it was the ubiquitous press credentials, which reporters seemed to think gave them access to every skeleton-filled closet in America. Well, he'd show them where they could stow their toe-sucking press cards.

Only it wasn't a press card. And the boys inside weren't jumping out like hyenas with their questions and their flashbulbs. Dobbins frowned as he moved closer, hearing nothing but the gritty sound of his own footfalls on the dirt and snow-covered brick of the alleyway. They certainly didn't act like any Washing­ton reporters he ever saw.

Rookies, probably. Independents. Trying to get their first big public expose, and not knowing a don­key's fart about how to get it. Well, here's your scoop, boys. And the subpoena will come in the morning to verify it. He pulled himself up to full height. He jutted

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an accusing finger at the car to throw a little scare into them. He put on his most authoritative general's voice. "What the hell are-"

The words choked off as the dark object poking through the driver's window lengthened and another, just like it, elongated sleekly out the rear window. And then he knew what they were as the men in the car- what were they wearing?-raised them to their shoul­ders and sighted through them and then the things bellowed bright fireworks in a deafening crash that sent brick flying off the walls behind Dobbins, and the general gasped once in red bubbles of blood, and his feet splayed out beneath him and the car was gone.

As he lay in the alleyway, riddled with what would later be determined as more than 100 wounds deliv­ered from a Chinese copy of a Soviet AK-47 subma­chine gun at point-blank range, Clive R. Dobbins's last thought was that the Secret Service boys could never have stopped the men in that car. The president him­self couldn't have stopped them, just as the president wouldn't be able to stop them the next time.

And the next time was going to be worse. Much worse.

Chapter Thirteen

DESTINATION 2ADNIA.

The Folcroft computers spewed out another piece to the puzzle of Felix Foxx. Dawn was peeking in through the Venetian blinds of Smith's office, and the light stung his eyes. He'd stayed awake in his office for two nights now, trying to sort out the tangled mess the computers had brought to him.

it was all there, he knew. Somewhere. During the past 48 hours the Folcroft Four had given him a million pieces of information. In Smith's weary brain, he be­gan to see the trusted computers as four diabolically wise beings from some unearthly plane, who gave him ail the parts to a machine and then said with a wink, "Okay, Smitty. Now you make it run."

But he hadn't been able to make it run. A hundred times over Smith had written down the salient points of the case. The overflowing wastebasket full of scraps of paper were testimony to his efforts. But nothing had jelled. The parts of the machine were as disparate as oranges and apples. With a sigh, he drew out another sheet of notepaper and began again.

First, there were the murders of the Secretary of the Air Force, Homer Watson, and the Secretary of the

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Navy, Thornton Ives, both killed in strange ways that reflected combat conditions. Every branch of the mili­tary had launched full-scale investigations on their own, without turning up so much as the smell of a lead. CURE'S own man, Remo, had come up almost as empty-handed. The only thing Remo had locked onto was some middle-aged diet doctor named Foxx who, for some unknown reason, the computers had decreed to be a ninety-four-year-old man named Vaux who was last heard from some fifty years before in connection with a scandal involving the youth-re­storing properties of a drug called procaine.