Dodge almost dropped his gun in surprise, but the other person looked even more startled as recognition dawned. “You!”
Dodge lowered the gun a little, unsure of how to react. “Anya. I was wondering where you’d gotten off to.”
For just a moment she looked completely lost at sea, but then her face regained its perpetual cat-like calm. “There’s not much time,” she said. “Come with me.”
“Hold your horses,” Nora demanded. “We’re not going anywhere with you till you answer some questions.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Dodge added.
She put her hands on her hips in a gesture of exasperation. “I told you that one of my revolutionary brothers is a spy in the baron’s crew. He helped me sneak aboard at Alamut, and I’ve been biding my time until we could strike. Tonight, we have made our move. I have your friends in a safe place, but you must come with me.”
“The baron?”
She blinked. “Yes.”
“Not ‘Barron.’ You used his title. How did you know that?”
“I’ve been hiding here for more than a week. Of course I learned Barron’s true identity.”
“You claim your spy has been here a lot longer than that. Funny how he didn’t tell you all about that, or about what Von Heissel is really up to.”
“This is ridiculous.” Anya’s imperturbable mask slipped. She half-turned, gesturing to the door. “Your friends are waiting. You need to come with me.”
Dodge leveled the pistol at her. “I really don’t think I want to go anywhere with you.”
“Dodge,” Nora’s voice quavered, and he knew something was wrong.
Tyr Sorensen stood on the stairwell, just behind Nora, with one of Hurricane’s massive automatic pistols pressed to her throat. “I think you should do what the lady says.”
Dodge’s heart sank. He offered no resistance as Anya stepped close and plucked the Colt from his grasp. “As I said, you need to come with me, now.”
Dodge and Nora, bookended by Anya and Sorensen, went into a large bay where Von Heissel was pacing anxiously. “Dalton. I might have known. What have you done to my ship?”
“I spied these two sneaking around on the landing platform,” Sorensen said. “I didn’t see anyone else up there. Not even crewmen. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not certain that he’s part of it.”
Dodge ignored them both and turned his attention instead to the enormous device suspended above the opening in the floor. He took a step closer and saw that the airship was moving ahead at a rapid clip. “I see you built your better death ray. Your plan to destroy the world is already finished, but you could probably salvage your reputation if you handed that thing over to the War Department.”
“Fool. You know nothing of my plans. And if you do not relinquish control of Majestic, I will…” For a moment, his fury overwhelmed his ability to think of a suitable threat, but then his eyes fell upon Nora. “I will put her underneath the resonance generator and let you watch as it turns her skeleton to powder.”
Dodge forced back a rising tide of fear and instead forced out a chuckle. “Now that’s more like I imagined you. All that’s missing is the evil chortle.”
The baron looked like he was about to explode, but Dodge quickly continued: “The honest truth is that I haven’t done anything to your ship. I just came to get Doc Newcombe and the others out of your slimy clutches.” He turned away from the opening and faced Anya. “What’s your story? You obviously aren’t an anarchist. Let me guess… daughter?”
“She is my granddaughter,” the baron said, regaining some of his composure. “The only child of my son who perished in the insanity of the Great War. You may mock me, but do not doubt my conviction to rid this world of this failure we call modern civilization. Now, answer my question. If you and your cohorts are not controlling my ship, why are we moving? Why is the control room not answering?”
Dodge spread his hands in a gesture of innocence. “I’d say you’ve got bigger problems than me right now.”
Von Heissel scowled. “That may be. But you are a problem I can deal with. Captain Sorensen, would you please kill them and throw them out that hole.”
Hurricane worked quickly, using the catwalks to place time-delayed explosive charges at several points around the helium-filled envelope. He set the first one for forty-five minutes and reduced the time for each one in succession so that they would detonate at approximately the same time, and with a little luck, long after they were safely away from the airship. It wouldn’t be a fiery explosion like the Hindenburg, but when the gas envelope ruptured, the ship would no longer be lighter than air. Regardless of whether or not they made it off, Majestic was going down.
He remained vigilant, moving stealthily, expecting at any moment for a crewman to discover him, but the cavernous interior was a quiet as a tomb. With the last of the charges in place, he hastened down, well ahead of his half-hour deadline.
He had just reached the last staircase above the landing platform when he glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye. He whirled around, gun drawn, but before his eyes could alight on anything, something flashed across his vision and struck the pistol from his hand in a shower of sparks.
He sprang backward, narrowly avoiding another swipe, yet his eyes refused to focus on his assailant. The man slipped out of his field of view like an egg white through his fingers. He retreated further, bounding backward, accompanied by the sound of steel slicing through the air where he had stood.
Can’t keep running away from this guy, he thought. But where in the hell is he?
He made a show of looking back and half-turned as if in preparation to flee, but then hurled himself forward in a low tackle, arms spread wide.
He caught just a glimpse of gray before his left arm struck something solid — a leg — and took the shadowy attacker down. He hammered blindly at the man with his right fist, holding nothing back. The blows slammed against flesh, cracked the bone underneath. The man struggled for a moment but then went limp, and Hurricane heard a clatter of metal against the deck plate. He gave one more punch for good measure then rolled off them man.
Even subdued, the man was hard to see; his gray clothes, which covered him from head to toe, seemed to blend perfectly with the shadows that painted the catwalk. But when Hurricane pulled off the hood, more than just the man’s face was revealed.
“Japanese,” he muttered. It might have been the same man that had attacked him in the Azores; it was hard to tell, mostly because Hurricane’s blindly thrown punches had seriously messed up the fellow’s mug. “Well, that explains the glider. I wonder how many more of you fellows are mucking about here.”
Then his eyes widened in horror as the full implications of that thought hit home.
Ryu Uchida gazed out the door of Majestic’s control room at the advancing mass of blue uniforms and breathed a curse. His ire was self-directed. He had been too quick to congratulate himself on the success of his bold venture.
He reached into the folds of his shinobi shozoku and withdrew a handful of what looked like ornate stars. He splayed them out in his fingers like playing cards and then with a deft flick of his wrist, hurled them into onrushing mob.
Cries of surprise and pain went up as the razor sharp points of the hira shuriken found flesh, and Uchida knew that in a matter of seconds, the wounded would realize that the pain of being stabbed by the projectiles was merely a harbinger of a much worse fate; the throwing stars were tipped in a lethal tetrodotoxin harvested from the liver of the fugu fish. Soon, their muscles would be seized by paralysis, and they would collapse, unable even to breathe. There was no antidote to fugu poison; they were already dead men, and didn’t yet realize it.